tlie  Church 

D.  325 


;AT£ 


^^\\^  ^'  ^^    BR    146     .B37    1905 
'    --^-^    Bate,    H.    N.     1871-1941. 
ADD  *^  >      History   of    the    church    to 
D.    325 

\^iiurun    L  CXI   nooKS 


General  Editor,  The  Rev.   LEIGHTON  PULLAN,  M.A., 

Fellow  of  St.  John's  College,  and  Lecturer  in  Theology 

at  St.  John's  and  Oriel  Colleges,  Oxford. 

The  Hebrew  Prophets.  The  Rev.  R.  L.  Ottley,  D.D.,  Canon 
of  Christ  Church  and  Regius  Professor  of  Pastoral  Theology 
in  the  University  of  Oxford. 

Outlines  of  Old  Testament  Theology.  The  Rev.  C.  F.  Burney, 
D.Litt.,  Lecturer  in  Hebrew  at  St.  John's  College,  Oxford. 

The  Text  of  the  New  Testament.  The  Rev.  K.  Lake,  M.A., 
Professor  of  New  Testament  Exegesis  and  Early  Christian 
Literature  in  the  University  of  Leyden. 

Early  Christian  Doctrine. 

The  Rev.  Leighton  Pullan,  M.A. 

An  Elementary  History  of  the  Church  in  Great  Britain. 

The  Rev.  W.   H.  Hutton,  B.D.,  Fellow  and  Tutor  of  St. 
John's  College,  Oxford. 

The  Reformation  in  Great  Britain. 

H.  O.  Wakeman,  M.A.,  late  Fellow  of  All  Souls  College, 
Oxford,  and  the  Rev.  Leighton  Pullan,  M.A. 

The  History  of  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer. 

The  Rev.  J.  H.   Maude,  M.A.,  Examining  Chaplain  to  the 
Bishop  of  St.  Albans. 

The  Articles  of  the  Church  of  Eng-land. 

The  Rev.  B.  J.   Kidd,  D.D.,  Vicar  of  St.  Paul's,   Oxford. 
In  2  Vols.    Vol.  L — History  and  Explanation  of  Articles  i.-viii. 
Vol.  n. — Explanation  of  Articles  ix.-xxxix. 
May  also  be  had  in  one  vol.     is.  net. 
The  Continental  Reformation.     The  Rev.  B.  J.  Kidd,  D.D. 

A    Manual    for    Confirmation.      The    Rev.   T.   Field,    D.D., 

Warden  of  Radley  College, 
A   History  of  the  Church  to  325.     The  Rev.   H.   N.   Bate, 

M.  A.,  Examining  Chaplain  to  the  Bishop  of  London. 

The  Church,  its  Ministry  and  Authority. 

The  Rev.  Darvvell  Stone,  M.A.,  Librarian  of  Pusey  House, 
Oxford. 

London  :  Rivingtons,  34  King  Street,  Covent  Garden. 
xii,  1906.  I 


Oxford  Church  Text  Books—Continued. 

A  History  of  the  American  Church  to  the  close  of  the  Nine= 
teenth  Century.  The  Right  Rev.  Leighton  Coleman. 
S.T.D.,  LL.D.,  Bishop  of  Delaware,  U.S.A. 

The    Future   State.     The  Rev,  S.  C.  Gayford,  M.A., 
Vice-Principal  of  Cuddesdon  College. 

Evidences  of  Christianity.  The  Rev,  L.  Ragg,  M.A.,  Preben- 
dary and  Vice-Chancellor  of  Lincoln  Cathedral. 

The  Apostles'  Creed.    By  A.  E.  Burn,  D.D,, 

Rector  of  Handsworth  and   Prebendary  of   Lichfield,  -and 
Examining  Chaplain  to  the  Bishop  of  Lichfield. 


THE   CHURCH   UNIVERSAL 
Brief  Histories  of  Her  Continuous  Life 

Edited   by   The    Rev.    W.    H.    HUTTON,    B,D,, 
Fellow  and  Tutor  of  St.  John's  College,  Oxford. 

The  Church  of  the  Apostles. 

The  Rev,  Lonsdale  Ragg,  M.A. 

The  Church  of  the  Fathers.    98-461. 

The  Rev,  Leighton  Pullan,  M.A.     5s.  net. 

The  Church  and  the  Barbarians.    461-1003. 

The  Editor.     3s,  6d,  net. 

The  Church  and  the  Empire.     1003-1304, 

D.  J.  Medley,  M.A. ,  Professor  of  History  in  the  University 
of  Glasgow,  formerly  Tutor  of  Keble  College,  Oxford. 

The  Ag-e  of  Schism.     1304-1503. 

Herbert  Bruce,  M.A. ,  Lecturer  and  Head  of  the  Depart- 
ment of  History  in  the  University  College,  Cardiff. 

The  Reformation.     1503-1648. 

The  Rev.  J.  P.  Whitney,  B.D.,  Chaplain  of  St.  Edward's 
Cambridge,  and  Hulsean  Lecturer.     5s.  net. 

The  Age  of  Revolution.    1648-1815. 

The  Editor, 

The  Church  of  Modern  Days.    1815-1900, 
The  Rev.  Leighton  Pullan,  M.A. 


London  :  Rivingtons,  34  King  Street,  Covent  Garden. 


History  of  the  Church 

to    A.D.     325 


BY 


The    Rev.    H.    N.    BATE,    M.A. 

VICAR  OF  s.  Stephen's,  hampstead 

EXAMINING   CHAPLAIN    TO   THE   BISHOP   OF    LONDON 


THIRD  IMPRESSION 


RIVINGTONS 

34  KING  STREET,   CO  VENT  GARDEN 

LONDON 

1905 


PREFACE 

In  preparing  the  following  history,  it  has  been  found 
necessary  to  omit  all  mention  of  some  important 
subjects;  but  it  is  hoped  that  no  gap  has  been  left 
which  will  not  be  filled  up  in  other  volumes  of  this 
series.  Thus  a  fuller  account  of  doctrine  will  be  found 
in  Early  Christian  Doctrine,  the  origin  of  the  ministry 
will  be  described  in  The  Church,  its  Ministry  and 
Authority,  the  formation  of  the  New  Testament  in  An 
Introduction  to  the  New  Testament. 

The  author  wishes  to  point  out  that  it  is  possible  for 
English  readers  to  acquaint  themselves  with  the  original 
sources  of  early  Church  history  by  using  Professor 
Gwatkin's  valuable  Selections  from  Early  Christian 
Writers. 


CONTENTS 


I.  The  Roman  World  and  the  Jewish  Relig-ion^  1 

II.  The  Apostolic  Age, 15 

in.  Church  and  State  down  to  a.  d.  112,      .         .  36 

IV.  Jewish  Christianity, 47 

V.  Gnosticism  and  Montanism,  .         ...  56 

VI.  Apologists  of  the  Second  Century,         .         .  63 

VII.  Church  and  State  from  Hadrian  to  Commodus,  79 

vTii.   The  Churches  of  Rome  and  Alexandria,         .  92 

IX.  Church  and  State  from  Septimius  Severus  to 

Constantine, 108 

X.  The  Council  of  Nicaea, 118 

xr.  The  Church  Calendar,           ....  126 

Chronological  Table, 134 

Index, 138 


CHURCH  HISTORY   TO  A.D.  325 

CHAPTER  I 

THE    ROMAN    WORLD   AND   THE    JEWISH  RELIGION 

The  foundation  and  early  growth  of  the  Christian  Church 
can  be  studied  directly  in  the  work  of  contemporary 
Christian  writers :  of  these  only  one^  S.  Luke,  com- 
posed a  narrative :  the  rest  of  the  New  Testament 
helps  us  only  by  references  and  allusions  to  the  life  of 
the  body  for  which  it  was  written.  But  the  reader  of 
S.  Luke's  ^second  treatise'  will  find  that  Christian 
books  do  not  by  themselves  enable  him  to  form  a  com- 
plete or  intelligible  picture  of  early  Church  life.  For, 
first,  the  Church  was  planted  on  Jewish  soil  by  Jews  : 
its  doctrines  were  carried  round  the  Jewish  world  and 
came  into  conflict  with  Jewish  ways  of  thinking  and 
customary  law  ;  and  its  preachers  were  not  at  first  under- 
stood to  be  propagating  anything  more  than  a  peculiar 
form  of  the  Jewish  faith. 

Again,  the  whole  of  the  history  which  the  '  Acts ' 
relates  took  place  within  the  boundaries  of  one  secular 
power.  When  the  peace  of  Jerusalem  was  broken  by 
Jewish  religious  disturbances,  the  offence  was  against 
Roman  administrative  law  :  when  S.  Paul  travelled  as 
a  missionary,  he  passed  over  Roman  roads,  along  the 
highways  of  Roman  commerce,  under  the  protection  of 
the  Roman  franchise.  There  were  of  course  other 
points  at  which  the  new  doctrine  came  into  contact  with 
the  pagan  world  :  we  find  it  exciting  the  wonder  or 
A 


2        CHURCH    HISTORY   TO   A.D.    326 

hatred  of  Asiatics  in  Lycaonia  aud  at  Ephesu8,  or  stimu- 
lating the  curiosity  of  philosophers  at  Athens ;  but  the 
only  two  great  external  forces  with  which  it  had  to 
reckon  were  the  Jewish  religion  and  the  Roman  empire. 
The  importance  of  the  former  was  destined  to  diminish 
and  pass  away,  and  that  of  the  latter  to  increase  and 
remain ;  and  therefore  it  is  natural  for  the  Christian 
history  of  the  Church  to  start  with  an  account  of  the 
Roman  world. 

The  Roman  Empire. —In  the  first  century  of  our  era, 
the  Roman  State  was  the  unquestioned  source  of  law 
and  justice  for  all  the  countries  which  bordered  upon 
or  had  direct  communication  with  the  Mediterranean 
Sea,  from  the  Euphrates  in  the  east  to  the  Atlantic, 
aud  from  the  Weser  in  the  north  to  the  African  desert. 
Within  these  limits,  which  are  only  a  rough  approxi- 
mation to  the  lines  of  the  imperial  frontier,  Roman 
soldiers  or  magistrates  maintained  a  unity  of  law  and 
administration  which  adapted  itself  successfully  to  the 
varying  needs  of  civilised  or  semi-barbarous  regions. 
The  imperial  roads,  serving  as  channels  alike  for  the 
passage  of  troops,  the  promotion  of  trade,  or  the  pro- 
pagation of  ideas,  linked  together  the  great  cities  in 
which  the  many  nationalities  of  the  empire  had  their 
centres.  A  completely  organised  system  of  posts  enabled 
travellers  to  pass  from  one  end  of  the  world  to  the  other, 
and  find  at  every  stage  a  change  of  horses  or  a  night's 
lodging.  It  was  a  natural  result  of  this  facility  for  com- 
munication that  the  great  towns  were  becoming  every- 
where assimilated  to  the  Roman  pattern,  and  that  the 
comforts  and  even  the  amusements  of  Roman  life  were 
everywhere  to  be  found.  But  the  Rome  whose  manners 
were  thus  becoming  universal  was  not  the  Rome  of  the 
early  republican  days.  From  the  latter  part  of  the 
second  century  b.c.  the  conquered  Greeks  had  been 
importing  into  the  city  of  their  conquerors  the  literature, 
the  art,  and  the  speech  of  Hellas.  The  culture  and  even 
the  language  of  Romans  had  thus  become  largely  Greek ; 
nor  were  the  habits  which  they  taught  the  provincials  any 
more  purely  Roman.  Over  a  large  part  of  the  empire 
the  Greek  language  had  come  to  be  spoken  before  Roman 


ROMAN  WORLD  AND  JEWISH   RELIGION      3 

conquest  began  :  the  conquests  of  Alexander  had  had  so 
much  of  permanent  result,  and  the  cities  of  the  East 
(including  Egypt)  were  already  so  generally  similar  in 
speech  and  manners^  as  to  assist  considerably  in  the 
unification  of  the  empire  of  which  they  became  a  part. 
Naturally,  then,  the  common  speech  of  the  empire  was 
not  Latin,  but  Greek  ;  and  with  Greek  a  man  might  travel 
anywhere  and  be  understood.  It  should  be  noticed, 
however,  that  the  ^Romanising'  of  the  provinces  did  not 
as  a  rule  extend  to  the  country  districts  :  these  retained 
their  own  speech  and  manners  unchanged.  Aramaic,  for 
instance,  was  spoken  in  Palestine,  and  the  ^speech  of 
Lycaonia'  in  the  south-west  of  the  Galatian  province. 
This  fact  will  be  seen  to  have  had  some  influence  on  the 
directions  taken  by  the  expanding  Church. 

The  provinces  of  the  empire  were  held  together  by  a 
complex  system  of  administration.  Cities  were  allowed 
a  certain  amount  of  self-government,  but  the  real 
authority  was  exercised  by  a  magistrate  from  Rome,  who 
was  either  a  legate,  deputed  by  the  emperor  himself,  or  a 
pro-consul,  the  nominee  of  the  senate.  Where  a  subject 
prince  was  suffered  to  retain  his  dignity  and  a  part  of 
his  prerogatives,  as  was  the  case  in  Palestine,  a  Roman 
procurator,  the  subordinate  of  a  provincial  governor, 
controlled  the  exercise  of  his  functions.  But  besides  the 
unity  of  administration,  the  empire  was  fortunate  in  pos- 
sessing a  certain  degree  of  religious  unity,  and  that  of  a 
kind  unparalleled  in  the  history  of  the  western  world. 

Decay  of  the  Roman  religion. — The  Romans  of  the 
early  republic  had  been  used  to  practise  a  religion 
which  invested  with  sanctity  and  dedicated  to  super- 
natural protection  all  the  phases  of  agricultural  and 
domestic  life  ;  every  domestic  occasion  and  every  family 
tie  were  believed  to  depend  on  the  favour  of  some  divine 
being :  children  learned  that  their  birth,  their  nursing, 
their  first  steps,  their  learning  to  talk,  had  each  its 
appropriate  god  or  fairy,  and  thus  the  whole  life  of 
the  home,  with  its  ceaseless  round  of  pious  observances, 
was  felt  to  have  an  intimate  relation  with  the  powers  of 
an  unseen  world.  The  same  '  superstitiousness '  marked 
the   old  Italian   feeling   towards   Nature.      All   natural 


4        CHURCH    HISTORY    TO    A.D.    325 

forces  were  thought  of  as  beings  capable  of  goodwill  or 
hostility  :  farmers  sacrificed  to  Ceres  before  ploughing ; 
sailors  to  Neptune  before  making  a  voyage ;  woods  and 
rivers  had  their  tutelary  spirits,  with  whom  it  was  right 
to  keep  on  good  terms ;  and  the  farmer's  year,  like  the 
round  of  domestic  life,  was  marked  and  solemnised  by 
the  recurrence  of  its  religious  ceremonies. 

But  the  religion  of  the  old  repubhc  was  not  the  re- 
ligion of  imperial  Rome.  In  the  country  districts,  indeed, 
little  change  had  taken  place.  Superstitions  survive  even 
to  the  present  day  among  the  peasants  of  South  Italy, 
which  had  their  origin  in  the  old  nature-religion;  and 
in  the  first  century  a.d.,  a  witty  Roman  could  still  say 
that  ^in  Campania  there  were  more  gods  than  men.' 
But  in  Rome  and  among  the  educated  the  old-fashioned 
ritual  had  lost  its  meaning.  With  the  influx  of  Greek 
thought  had  come  first  the  identification  of  the  native 
Italian  gods,  Jupiter,  Juno,  and  Minerva,  with  Zeus, 
Hera,  and  Athena  :  the  statues  which  to  the  Greek  had 
symbolised  the  ideal  of  beauty,  order,  and  strength,  the 
dominant  elements  in  his  conception  of  deity,  were 
accepted  as  representations  of  gods  that  owed  their 
origin  to  the  apotheosis  of  the  forces  of  nature.  But 
in  the  wake  of  this  movement  of  Greek  taste,  Greek 
scepticism  had  followed.  A  religion  so  local  and  national 
as  the  Italian  could  not  become  cosmopolitan  without 
ceasing  to  be  natural,  and  in  becoming  conventional  it 
ceased  to  be  a  faith,  and  degenerated  into  a  set  of  cere- 
monies. GcBrimonicB  Romanes  was  the  apt  designation  of 
the  ofiicial  ritual,  by  which  only  the  women  and  the 
vulgar  believed  themselves  brought  into  communication 
with  the  unseen. 

The  demand  for  a  new  faith. — The  period  of  the  early 
empire  was,  however,  by  no  means  a  period  of  mere 
scepticism.  Disbelief  in  the  popular  mythology  was  not 
universal,  and,  what  is  more,  it  was  not  necessarily  irre- 
ligious. On  all  sides  we  trace  the  growth  of  a  desire  for 
a  new  religion.  Apart  from  Judaism  and  Christianity, 
there  were  two  chief  sources  from  which  this  need  could 
be  supplied — 

1.  The  Greek  mysteries. — At  Eleusis  in  Attica,  and  in 


ROMAN  WORLD  AND   JEWISH  RELIGION      6 

many  of  the  Greek  cities  of  Asia,  were  practised  certain 
secret  ceremonies  which  professed  to  satisfy  man's  desire 
for  knowledge  of  the  eternal  truth  by  means  of  symbolic 
initiation.  These  rites  did  indeed  take  into  account  the 
real  facts  of  human  nature  on  which  man's  need  and 
capacity  for  religion  rest :  they  recognised  sin,  and  pro- 
vided a  symbolic  purification ;  they  stimulated  and 
attempted  to  satisfy  man's  spiritual  ambition  by  means 
of  a  pageantry  which  introduced  the  purified  novice  as 
^regenerate'  from  a  darkened  room  into  a  scene  of 
mysterious  brightness  and  solemnity ;  blessedness  and 
immortality  were  understood  to  be  the  fruit  of  initiation. 
It  cannot  be  doubted  that  the  appetite  to  which  these 
ceremonies  ministered  was  a  genuine  one.  Men  were 
becoming  anxious  about  themselves,  conscious  of  moral 
failure,  aware  that  in  order  to  face  the  unexplained 
'  something  after  death/  they  needed  an  inward  renewal 
of  the  will  and  a  reconciliation  with  the  powers,  what- 
ever they  might  be,  that  made  the  moral  law.  Such 
feelings  were  encouraged  by  the  most  sincere  philosophers 
of  the  time.  There  was  demand  enough  for  sermons 
on  subjects  of  deep  moment  to  maintain  in  every  city, 
whether  as  public  teachers  or  domestic  chaplains,  a 
number  of  these  men,  who  served,  at  any  rate,  to  stimulate 
men's  interest  in  deep  questions.  The  tendency  of  the 
most  influential  type  of  philosophy — the  Stoic — moved 
strongly  in  the  direction  of  personal  religion.  Believing 
that  the  world  was  indwelt  by  Reason,  and  that  man's 
duty  was  to  conform  himself  to  the  law  of  that  Reason, 
Stoics  were  beginning  to  discover  how  far  man  must 
always  be  from  corresponding,  unaided,  with  that  law — 
how  unattainable  man  s  true  '  nature '  really  was.  Hence 
the  Stoics  were  helping  man  to  realise  the  fact  of  sin,  and 
to  feel  the  need  of  redemption. 

2.  The  worship  of  foreign  deities. — Republican  Rome 
(and  the  early  empire  to  a  certain  extent)  was  hostile  to 
the  introduction  of  foreign  rites  into  Rome.  But  in  the 
first  century  public  feeling  demanded  more  and  more 
toleration.  Intolerance  of  private  ceremonies  had  always 
been  impossible ;  and  now  public  exhibition  began  to  be 
freely  made  of  cults  that  were,  strictly  speaking,  illegal. 


6        CHURCH    HISTORY    TO   A.D.    325 

The  religions  of  the  East  were  materialistic  in  idea  and 
sensual  in  practice.  The  women  and  uneducated  classes 
of  imperial  Rome  welcomed  the  frantic  priests  of  the 
'great  mother'  Cyhele  and  Sabazius^  as  those  of  Athens 
had  welcomed  them^  even  when  Athens  was  at  its  best. 
They  demanded,  if  not  religion,  at  least  violent  emotion 
in  a  religious  form.  In  response  to  this  demand,  '  every- 
thing,' says  Tacitus,  '  that  was  scandalous  and  shameful 
flowed  to  Rome  and  was  welcomed  there.'  Immoral 
rites,  such  as  those  of  Astarte  and  Adonis  from  Phoenicia, 
and  imposing  spectacles  such  as  the  processions  of  Isis 
and  Serapis,  were  accessible  to  Romans.  From  Persia 
came  a  form  of  monotheism,  the  worship  of  the  sun-god 
Mithras,  which  ha'd  taken  strong  hold  on  the  army,  and 
may  be  traced  wherever  the  legions  have  left  marks  of 
their  occupation. 

By  these  numerous  and  most  varied  forms  of  worship 
the  general  desire  of  men  for  a  religion  was  stimulated 
but  not  satisfied.  The  opportunity  thus  given  was  often 
seized  by  prophets  and  teachers  more  or  less  fraudulent, 
who  drew  after  them  large  folio  wings  of  credulous  seekers 
for  a  revelation.  Philosophers  meanwhile,  especially 
those  who  concerned  themselves  with  morals,  watching 
the  coincidence  of  increasing  religiousness  with  declin- 
ing morality,  stood  more  and  more  aloof  from  religion. 
Moreover,  this  stream  of  foreign  invasion  flov/ing  with 
varying  force  during  the  last  centuries  of  the  pre- 
Christian  empire,  baffled  the  efforts  made  by  rulers  such 
as  Augustus  and  Domitian  to  reanimate  the  spirit  of  the 
old  Roman  religion  :  the  Roman  gods  could  not  be  duly 
served  when  all  gods  were  Roman. 

All  these  processes  turned  in  the  end  to  the  profit 
of  Christianity,  which  brought  to  a  restless,  dissatisfied 
world  the  offer  of  knowledge  and  moral  regeneration. 
The  resistance  of  paganism  was  always  strong,  and  in 
many  times  of  reaction  violent;  but  it  was  never  the 
resistance  of  a  united  and  settled  religious  order.  In 
the  fourth  century  the  emperor  Julian  attempted  to  set 
up  a  resistance  of  this  kind,  but  the  effort  came  too  late, 
and  rested  solely  on  the  personal  influence  of  one  man. 
The  only  antagonism  which  really  checked  the  Christian 


ROMAN   WORLD  AND  JEWISH   RELIGION      7 

advance  relied  not  on  a  personal  conviction,  but  on  an 
imperial  policy — the  policy  which  promoted  the  worship 
of  the  Roman  emperors. 

The  religion  of  the  Empire. — It  was  said  above  that 
the  Roman  empire  possessed  a  certain  religious  unity ; 
and  in  spite  of  the  enormous  variety  of  the  beliefs  and 
forms  of  worship  practised  within  its  limits,  the  policy  of 
the  emperors  did  succeed  in  creating  and  maintaining 
one  cult  which  was  universal — the  worship  of  the  Divi 
August!  and  the  Genius  of  the  Roman  people.  The 
history  of  this  '  religion '  dates  from  the  reign  of 
Augustus  (B.C.  30 — A.D.  14).  It  had  been  a  part  of 
Augustus'  policy  to  initiate  a  serious  revival  of  the  old 
religion  at  Rome  :  twenty-nine  temples  and  shrines  in 
and  about  Rome  were  restored,  the  old  religious  cor- 
porations such  as  the  Salii  and  the  Arval  Brothers,  with 
their  almost  prehistoric  rites,  were  encouraged  to  revive. 
But  this  movement  was  only  intended  to  foster  the  true 
Roman  spirit  among  Romans :  it  was  not  the  prelude  to 
any  similar  propaganda  in  the  provinces.  There  a  policy 
of  universal  toleration  had  always  been  maintained  :  the 
gods  of  conquered  nations  were  approached  with  pro- 
pitiatory offerings  and  added  to  the  imperial  pantheon. 
This  liberalism  had  only  two  bounds :  the  religions  of 
the  world  were  as  a  general  rule  discouraged  from 
appearing  at  Rome,  and  they  were  required  not  to  be 
intolerant  of  the  additional  cult  with  which  the  empire 
provided  them. 

In  the  ancient  world,  the  line  which  separates  respect 
from  reverence  was  not  hard  to  ignore.  The  awe  with 
which  Julius  Caesar  was  regarded  found  expression 
immediately  after  his  death  in  the  erection  of  an  altar 
in  his  honour.  What  Romans  could  thus  feel  towards 
a  man  of  genius,  the  world  could  feel  towards  Rome, 
and  to  the  emperor  in  whom  the  genius  of  the  empire 
seemed  to  be  incarnate.  In  the  lifetime  of  Augustus, 
temples  were  erected  in  his  honour  in  Gaul  and  Asia. 
Augustus  did  not  personally  approve  of  this,  but  he  was 
not  anxious  to  suppress  any  expression  of  devotion  to 
the  power  on  which  the  world's  peace  and  security 
depended.      In    the    reigns    of    the     next   succeeding 


8        CHURCH    HISTORY    TO   A.D.    325 

emperors,  the  worship  of  Rome  and  the  August!  was  de- 
veloped throughout  the  world.  Cities  which  paid  unique 
veneration  to  particular  deities,  and  would  have  resented 
the  competition  of  any  more  local  cult^  were  ready  to 
welcome  a  worship  which  was  too  universal  to  clash  with 
their  special  devotion.  Barbarous  tribes,  who  had  long 
viewed  the  unchecked  progress  of  the  Roman  eagles  as 
a  supernatural  fact,  found  it  easy  to  convert  fear  into 
reverence. 

The  political  value  of  this  new  religion  was  very 
considerable :  it  bound  the  empire  together  by  a  tie 
which  all  were  proud  to  acknowledge,  and  lent  to  the 
Roman  instinct  for  ruling  the  solemnity  of  a  super- 
natural sanction. 

We  shall  find  that  the  history  of  the  Christian  Church 
was  deeply  affected  by  this  institution.  Polytheists  could 
afford  to  be  tolerant :  to  add  one  god  to  a  pantheon 
involves  no  sacrifice  of  principle.  But  the  worship  of 
one  God  is  destroyed  by  the  intrusion  of  a  rival.  The 
Jews'  allegiance  to  a  jealous  God  was  always  under 
special  protection ;  the  Church,  which,  as  it  grew,  stood 
always  more  and  more  aloof  from  Judaism,  was  inflexible 
in  its  monotheism,  but  unprotected  from  the  odium 
which  this  involved.  Hence,  through  the  working  of 
the  institution  which  gave  religious  unity  to  the  empire, 
the  Church  and  the  State  came  to  stand  over  against 
each  other  as  irreconcilable  enemies. 

Judaism. — Of  the  great  body  of  Jews  whom  the 
empires  of  the  Euphrates  valley  had  swept  away  north- 
ward, only  a  small  proportion  returned  to  Palestine. 
Many  remained  in  Babylon,  and  many  were  dispersed 
over  other  lands.  The  history  of  the  post-exilic  Jews 
is  therefore  concerned  with  a  divided  nation,  with  the 
people  of  Palestine  on  the  one  hand  and  the  Jews  of  the 
Diaspora  or  Dispersion  on  the  other.  The  number  of 
the  Dispersed  and  the  remoteness  of  their  settlements 
from  Palestine  constantly  increased.  Commercial  enter- 
prise drew  them,  in  the  third  century  b.c,  wherever 
Alexander's  conquests  had  planted  Greek  civilisation. 
They  became  specially  numerous  in  Egypt,  and  in 
Alexandria    formed     so     considerable    a    part    of    the 


ROMAN  WORLD  AND  JEWISH   RELIGION      9 

population  that  two  out  of  the  five  quarters  were 
allotted  to  them,  and  a  special  magistrate  administered 
their  affairs.  In  the  cities  of  Asia  and  the  East,  gener- 
ally, were  found  populous  ghettos,  many  of  them  dating 
from  the  time  of  Antiochus  the  Great  (b.c.  220),  who 
deported  a  large  number  of  Jewish  families  from  Pales- 
tine and  settled  them  in  Phrygia.  At  the  beginning  of 
our  era,  the  cities  of  the  West  also  had  their  Jewish 
colonies,  thriving  communities  of  shrewd  and  capable 
men  of  commerce.  Pompey,  who  entered  Jerusalem  as 
conqueror  in  b.c.  63,  had  removed  30,000  Jews,  it  is 
said,  to  Rome  itself;  at  any  rate,  the  Hebrew  population 
was  large  enough  when  the  Church  was  founded  to  occupy 
a  separate  quarter  in  the  region  across  the  Tiber. 

These  Jewish  populations,  scattered  though  they  were, 
preserved,  as  the  Jews  of  to-day  preserve,  a  marvellous 
degree  of  distinctness  and  racial  unity.  The  strictness  of 
life  according  to  the  law,  with  its  regulations  about  food 
and  marriage,  and  the  barriers  with  which  it  repelled  the 
alien,  kept  them  everywhere  apart  from  their  Gentile 
neighbours ;  and  while  the  Temple  stood,  to  which 
every  one  sent  his  annual  half-shekel,  Jerusalem  as  their 
centre  held  all  Jews  together  by  the  attraction  which 
drew  all  alike  to  its  constant  festivals.  The  habit  of 
travelling  natural  to  a  trading  nation  acted  also  as  a 
bond  of  union,  as  the  constant  stream  of  commerce  passed 
from  city  to  city.  This  distinctness  was  recognised  and 
allowed  for  by  the  Roman  government :  Jews  were 
exempted  from  military  service,  and  their  Sabbath  was  a 
protected  institution,  legally  counted  as  a  dies  non.  The 
uniqueness  of  the  Jewish  religion  was  also  left  without 
interference ;  even  the  imperial  worship  was  not  exacted 
from  a  nation  which  was  too  useful  to  be  destroyed,  and 
so  deeply  monotheistic  that  it  would  choose  annihilation 
rather  than  idolatry. 

Jewish  religion  after  the  Exile. — The  Jews  brought  back 
from  exile  a  heightened  sense  of  the  unique  holiness  of 
Jehovah  and  the  peculiar  dignity  of  the  people  to  whom 
He  had  committed  the  law.  The  release  from  direct 
foreign  domination  stimulated  also  their  desire  to  realise 
the  ideal  of  a  State  in  which  God  alone  had  the  name  of 


10      CHURCH    HISTORY   TO   A.  D.    325 

King.  The  revived  worship  of  the  Temple  gave  rise  to 
a  new  complication  of  ceremonial  order  and  a  zealous 
study  of  legal  detail.  The  germs  of  '  Pharisaic '  prin- 
ciples and  the  interpretative  work  of  Scribes  must  have 
had  their  origin  in  this  period.  The  conquests  of  Alex- 
ander and  the  long  struggles  between  the  descendants 
of  his  generals  brought  Palestine  into  a  contact  with  the 
Greek  world  which  might  have  obliterated  Hebraism 
altogether ;  but  when  Antiochus  Epiphanes  in  170  took 
possession  of  the  holy  city,  desecrated  the  Temple,  and 
attempted  to  transform  the  holy  land  by  means  of  Greek 
idolatry,  Greek  ways  of  life,  and  Greek  amusements,  the 
family  of  the  Maccabees  headed  a  rebellion  which  rescued 
and  restored  the  Church  and  nation  alike.  The  last  two 
centuries  before  Christ,  starting  with  this  violent  reaction 
against  foreign  pollution,  saw  a  great  development  of  all 
that  was  peculiar  to  Judaism.  Prophecy  was  at  an  end, 
but  in  its  place  the  Scribes  and  Pharisees  (the  separate, 
i.e.  anti-foreign,  sect)  promoted  a  minute  study  of  the  law, 
which  served  to  legislate  for  particular  cases  on  ostensibly 
Scriptural  principles.  A  mass  of  ^  traditions  '  grew  up  by 
the  side  of  the  written  Word,  just  as  the  'responsa 
prudentum  '  in  the  Roman  law  of  the  empire  grew  up 
by  the  side  of  positive  legislation.  The  propagation  of 
these  traditions  was  carried  on  in  the  country  districts 
by  the  synagogues,  which  served  first  as  places  of  instruc- 
tion and  then  as  a  kind  of  local  substitute  for  the  central 
worship  of  Jerusalem. 

These  two  centuries  were  marked,  however,  by  a 
great  degeneration.  The  descendants  of  the  Maccabees 
became  kings  with  secular  interests ;  and  their  royalty, 
always  keenly  opposed  by  the  Pharisees,  was  so  far  from 
representing  the  throne  of  David  that  in  B.C.  89  it 
passed,  through  Roman  interference,  into  the  hands  of 
an  Idumaean,  Herod  the  Great.  The  religion  of  the 
Pharisees,  meanwhile,  had  become  in  large  measure 
formal,  and  the  ^traditions'  were  used  to  justify  unfaith- 
fulness to  the  spirit  of  the  law.  The  mass  of  the  people, 
however,  adhered  to  this  type  of  teaching,  while  a 
majority  of  the  wealthy,  who  held  in  the  apostolic  age 
the  chief  administrative  positions,  including  the  High 


ROMAN  WORLD  AND   JEWISH   RELIGION    11 

Priesthood,  found  justification  for  an  easier  way  of  life 
by  rejecting  the  traditions  of  the  elders  and  professing  to 
hold  the  pure  doctrine  of  Moses.  This  class,  known  as 
Sa,dducees,  rejected  even  the  beliefs  as  to  the  future  life, 
which  later  Judaism,  with  its  considerable  apocalyptic 
literature,  had  developed. 

The  Messianic  Hope. — The  sects  differed  much  among 
themselves  in  their  attitude  to  the  national  ideal.     The 
expectation  of  a  Messiah,  which  took  shape  in  the  later 
prophetic  period  and  was  in  the  prophets  inseparable  from 
the  hope  of  a  spiritual  regeneration,  had  sunk  by  the  time 
of  our  Lord  to  a  low  level  of  secularity.    The  few  who,  in 
the  true  sense,  '  awaited  the  consolation  of  Israel '  were 
greatly  outnumbered  by  those  who  wished  for  nothing 
more  than  freedom  from  Roman  taxation.     Hence,  al- 
though about  the  time  when  Pompey  defiled  Jerusalem 
with  Roman  troops  (b.c.  G8)  the  Messianic  hope  found 
noble  expression  in  the  ^  Psalms  of  Solomon,'  it  now  more 
frequently  gave  rise  to  fanatic  outbreaks  of  nationalism, 
such  as  were  those  of  Judas  of  Gamala  (a.b.   7)  and 
Theudas  (a.d.  45).      From  this  type  of  patriotism  the 
dynasty  of  the  Herods  kept  itself  free  ;  and  a  small  court 
party  of  '  Herodians'  followed  it  in  a  willing  and  profit- 
able subjection  to  Roman  supremacy.     The  Sadducees, 
a  lax  and   secular  party,  having  everything  to  lose  by 
patriotism,  stood  also  on  the  safe  side,  and  viewed  the 
Messianic  hope  as  no  part  of  the  original  Mosaic  tradi- 
tion.    The  Pharisees  on  the  other  hand,  though  not  a 
party  of  zealots,  were  strongly  nationalist :  their  acqui- 
escence in  the  Herodian  dynasty  was  only  a  yielding  to 
necessity,  and  to  their  teaching  was  due  the  wave  of 
enthusiasm  which  would  have  taken  Jesus  by  force  and 
made  Him  king.     The  influence  of  the  Messianic  hope 
on  the  spread  of  Christianity  is  hard  to  estimate.     To 
the  mass  of  Jews  Jesus  was  not  the  Messiah,  and  there- 
fore their  continued  expectation  only  embittered  their 
hatred  for  the  Church.     On  the  other  hand,  among  the 
Gentiles,  Messianic  prophecy  was  not  a  primary  instru- 
ment in  their  conversion,  although  it  was  freely  used  by 
apologists  in  controversy  with  pagan  opponents.     To  the 
Church  of  Jerusalem,  however,  and  to  Jewish  converts 


12       CHURCH    HISTORY   TO    A.D.    826 

everywhere,  it  was  doubtless  of  the  first  importance  that 
Palestinian  tradition  had  retained,  in  however  degenerate 
a  form,  the  expectation  of  a  national  deliverer. 

Judaism  and  foreign  influences. — Meanwhile  Judaism 
had  been  largely  influenced  by  external  forces.  In 
Palestine  itself,  on  the  borders  of  the  Dead  Sea,  a  sect 
or  community  known  as  the  Essenes  had  been  founded, 
which  borrowed  from  the  far  East  the  belief  that  matter 
was  essentially  evil,  repudiated  the  sacrifices  of  the 
Temple,  held  curious  speculations  as  to  the  origin  of  the 
world,  and  lived  a  life  of  strict  asceticism  with  frequent 
ritual  purifications.  In  the  Dispersion,  the  tendency 
which  drew  all  Jewish  thought  and  prayer  towards 
Jerusalem  was  indeed  still  active :  the  first  chapter 
of  the  Acts  shows  how  various  were  the  regions  from 
which  the  worshippers  at  the  Temple  vrere  drawn.  But 
a  centrifugal  tendency  was  also  at  work :  the  Dispersed 
people  were  aware  how  impossible  it  was  that  they 
should  ever  recover  the  home  of  their  origin,  and  were 
accommodating  themselves  to  the  fact.  In  Egypt,  for 
instance,  there  was  a  second  temple  at  Leontopolis  which 
repeated  the  sacrifices  of  Jerusalem  at  a  distance  from 
the  holy  city.  This  temple  was  erected  more  than  a 
century  and  a  half  before  Christ  by  Onias,  a  claimant 
for  the  High  Priesthood  ;  originally  schismatic,  it  was 
yet  tolerated  by  later  authority.  This  sanctuary  seems 
to  have  had  but  little  influence ;  its  existence,  however, 
was  a  remarkable  fact,  as  being  inconsistent  with  a  strict 
adherence  to  the  law.  Much  more  important  was  the 
tone  of  the  educated  Jewish  world  of  the  Dispersion, 
especially  in  its  strongest  centre,  Alexandria.  Here  was 
the  true  meeting-point  of  East  and  AFest :  a  great  Greek 
city  in  close  commercial  relations  with  the  Mediterannean 
on  the  one  hand,  and  the  East  as  far  as  India  on  the 
other.  It  was  here,  most  of  all,  that  Jews  became 
cosmopolitan. 

The  Septuagint. — Scriptural  Hebrew,  superseded  even 
in  Palestine  by  Aramaic,  became  to  the  Greek  Jews  a  dead 
language,  and  a  Greek  version  of  the  Scriptures  had  to 
be  prepared.  This  translation,  promoted  according  to  a 
Jewish  story  by  Ptolemy  Philadelphus  (b.c.  284)   and 


ROMAN   WORLD  AND  JEWISH   RELIGION    13 

miraculously  executed  by  seventy-two  interpreters,  was 
in  reality  the  growth  of  many  years.  By  the  time  of 
our  Lord,  it  was  the  Bible  of  by  far  the  larger  half  of  the 
Jewish  world.  But  contact  with  Greek  education  eiffected 
more  than  the  resetting  of  Scripture  in  an  alien  speech  : 
it  familiarised  Jews  with  religious  and  philosophical  con- 
ceptions of  an  alien  type.  Books  such  as  the  Wisdom  oi 
Solomon  and  Ecclesiasticus  illustrate  the  growth  among 
Jews  of  a  tolerance  and  sympathy  which  brought  Jew 
and  Greek  together  into  an  intellectual  kinship  such  as 
the  Palestinian  Pharisees  must  have  viewed  with  abhor- 
rence. This  breaking  down  of  the  barriers  between  Jew 
and  Gentile  created  a  class  of  Hebrew  thinkers  to  whom 
their  religion  was  a  philosophy  like  the  philosophies  of 
the  Greeks,  and  superior  only  in  the  fact  that  it  rested 
on  a  true  and  very  ancient  revelation.  All  wisdom,  it 
was  admitted,  came  from  one  Source,  Who  enlightened 
Jew  and  Gentile  alike.  ^  Plato,'  said  one  writer,  ^is 
Moses  speaking  Greek.'  Some  Jews  even  took  this 
epigram  literally,  and  sought  to  prove  that  all  the  best 
spirits  of  the  Greek  schools  drew  from  Hebrew  sources. 

The  greatest  Jew  of  this  liberalising  class  was  an  exact 
contemporary  of  our  Lord  and  the  Apostles,  Philo  of  Alex- 
andria (died  about  A.  D.  45).  Philo  was  a  genuine  Jew, 
devoted  to  the  Scriptures  and  deeply  learned  in  them, 
but  he  represented  a  Judaism  which  could  exist  wholly 
apart  from  Jerusalem  and  its  sacrifices.  Widely  read  in 
every  kind  of  Greek  literature  and  philosophy,  he  found 
it  possible  to  harmonise  the  two  sides  of  his  education 
by  means  of  an  elaborate  allegorical  interpretation  of  the 
Bible.  This  method,  which  attempted  to  gain  a  deeper 
insight  into  Scripture  while  evading  its  difficulties,  had 
been  applied  to  pagan  mythology  by  many  Greek 
thinkers,  and  was  not  new  to  students  of  the  Bible.  ^ 
Philo  so  applied  it  as  to  find  in  the  Bible  a  revealed 
Platonism,  according  to  which  man's  end  or  ideal  good- 
ness consisted  in  assimilation  to  God — his  worst  obstacle 
was  the  body  with  its  tendency  to  drag  the  soul  down- 
ward— and  his  way  to  victory  lay  through  asceticism  and 

1  See  for  instance  Gal.  iv.  24  ff.,  with  which  1  Cor.  ix.  9,  10, 
and  Heb.  vii.  1  ff.  may  be  compared. 


14      CHURCH    HISTORY    TO   A.D.    326 

contemplation.  Philo  was  of  great  importance  in  the 
history  of  Judaism  :  in  no  one  had  Hellenism  been  so 
completely  assimilated ;  but  in  the  history  of  Chris- 
tianity his  influence  was  far  greater,  for  some  of  the 
greatest  Christian  teachers  inherited  his  Platonism  and 
his  method  of  allegory ;  and  the  asceticism  of  Philo  found 
its  way  through  them  into  the  Churchy  and  became  the 
inspiring  principle  of  the  monastic  life. 

The  liberalising  tendency  which  produced  such  men  as 
Philo  did  not  affect  the  mass  of  Jews.  They  remained 
throughout  the  empire  a  class  separate  in  feeling  from 
the  Gentiles,  who  often  repaid  their  unsociableness  with 
open  hostility.  If  at  Rome  the  natural  attractiveness  of 
monotheism  drew  some  seekers  of  truth  to  the  worship 
of  Jehovah,  and  a  current  of  fashion  chanced  to  set  in 
the  same  direction,  yet  in  the  world  at  large  few  converts 
were  made  to  Judaism.  The  Rabbis  never  set  out  to 
conquer  the  world.  But  Judaism  was  at  least  geo- 
graphically universal ;  and  the  religion  which  came  out 
from  it  to  conquer  the  world  started  with  the  advantage 
of  having  some  ground  prepared  for  it  in  every  city. 
The  apostolic  missions  made  the  synagogues  of  the  world 
their  first  destination,  preaching  Christ  to  men  who  were 
expecting  a  Messiah.  The  comparative  unsuccessfulness 
of  these  missions  to  Jews  meant  that  the  importance  oi 
the  synagogues  to  the  Church  was  transitory  ;  but  at  the 
outset  it  was  real,  and  even  when  the  Church  came  to 
depend  for  its  growth  mainly  on  Gentile  converts,  it 
owed  to  the  Judaism  of  the  Dispersion  one  permanent 
debt — the  power  to  put  into  their  hands  the  Hebrew 
Scriptures  in  the  universal  language  of  the  empire. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE     APOSTOLIC     AGE 

In  Jerusalem,  at  the  feast  of  Pentecost,  in  the  year  29, 
the  company  which  had  gathered  round  the  Apostles  ot 
the  risen  Lord  received  the  new  impulse  which  was  to 
expand  it  into  a  universal  Church.  S.  Peter,  as  repre- 
senting the  Apostles,  affirmed  that  from  the  Resurrection 
a  new  era^  predicted  by  the  prophets,  had  begun :  the 
Messianic  rule  of  Jesus,  so  far  from  being  annulled  by  His 
death,  was  now  to  have  its  realisation  in  a  society  of  men 
baptized  into  His  Name  for  the  remission  of  sins;  and 
into  this  kingdom  the  Jews  first  were  called  to  enter. 
The  body  of  men  who  accepted  this  teaching  was  at  the 
outset,  and  for  some  years  remained,  a  Jewish  sect  without 
any  organised  centre  outside  Jerusalem.  The  '  faith  in 
the  Name'  of  Jesus,  on  which  it  was  founded,  did  not 
supersede  or  annul  the  faith  which  expressed  itself  in 
the  sacrificial  worship  of  the  Temple.  Among  the  earliest 
adherents,  indeed,  were  a  considerable  number  of  priests. 
The  Church  seemed  thus  at  first  to  be  a  special  movement 
of  orthodox  Judaism,  and  as  such  it  was  in  popular  favour. 
Its  only  opponents  were  the  official  chiefs  of  the  priestly 
organisation,  who,  being  Sadducees,  were  unfavourable 
to  the  Messianic  idea,  and  very  hostile  to  the  preaching 
of  a  resurrection.  Even  so,  however,  the  document 
from  which  S.  Luke  drew  his  account  of  those  early  days 
speaks  of  little  or  no  organised  antagonism  to  the  new 
society.  The  Word  was  preached  openly,  the  internal 
organisation  of  the  community  was  unhindered,  its  mem- 
bers frequented  the  Temple  without  molestation ;  and 
nothing  but  remonstrance  was  attempted  by  the  official 

16 


16      CHURCH    HISTORY   TO   A.D.    326 

opposition.  These  first  years  of  steady  advance  were, 
however,  interrupted  by  a  social  difficulty  which  fore- 
shadowed the  future  struggle  between  Jewish  and 
Catholic  Christianity.  The  society  included  among  its 
members  some  who  were  not  pure  Jews  by  birth,  but 
Greek  proselytes;  and  these  were  put  at  some  dis- 
advantage in  the  daily  ministrations,  their  claims  as 
members  being  considered  secondary  to  those  of  the 
pure  Jews.  This  unfairness  was  soon  remedied  by  the 
appointment  of  seven  special  officers  chosen  from  the 
Jews  and  Hellenists  alike,  whose  arbitration  would  both 
satisfy  the  aggrieved  parties  and  relieve  the  Apostles  from 
an  invidious  and  burdensome  task. 

Dispersion  and  extension  of  the  Church. — It  is  not  to  be 
supposed  that  the  Apostles  had  forgotten  their  vocation 
as  missionaries  to  the  whole  world.  A  later  tradition 
asserts  that  they  had  a  special  instruction  to  complete 
seven  (or  twelve)  years'  preliminary  work  in  Jerusalem. 
But  the  train  of  events  which  led  them  in  the  end  to 
seek  wider  opportunities  was  set  in  motion  by  causes 
outside  their  control.  The  truce  between  the  Church 
and  the  Law  was  bound,  in  fact,  to  prove  a  delusion, 
and  the  populace  of  Jerusalem  was  to  be  compelled  to 
choose  between  the  two.  The  reality  of  the  issue  was 
first  made  clear  by  the  preaching  of  one  of  the  seven 
deacons.  Stephen,  himself  presumably  a  Hellenist,  began 
to  denounce  the  people  which  had  rejected  its  Messiah 
with  a  vehemence  that  roused  an  equally  vehement  con- 
servative reaction.  The  murder  of  Jesus  was  parallel, 
he  taught,  to  the  worst  apostasies  of  every  period  of 
Jewish  history.  This  denunciation  of  authority  was 
taken  by  the  Pharisaic  party  as  an  incitement  to  a 
religious  revolution,  and  as  it  was  a  matter  in  which  a 
Roman  governor  could  not  be  induced  to  act,  a  popular 
tumult  was  organised  :  Stephen  died  as  a  blasphemer, 
sentenced  under  the  Levitical  code,  the  formal  correctness 
of  the  procedure  being  guaranteed  by  Saul,  the  very  man 
through  whom  the  liberation  of  the  Church  from  the 
fetters  of  the  Law  was  to  be  accomplished. 

The  martyrdom  of  Stephen  had  far-reaching  results. 
Not  only  did  it  initiate  in  Jerusalem  an   antagonism 


THE   APOSTOLIC   AGE  17 

between  unbelieving  and  Christian  JewSj  which  only  came 
to  an  end  with  the  city  itself,  but  it  proved  the  signal 
for  a  movement  of  active  persecution,  which  scattered 
the  seeds  of  the  faith  far  and  wide  throughout  Judaea, 
Samaria,  and  the  cities  of  the  Dispersion.  If  the  career 
of  Saul  the  persecutor  was  typical,  it  may  be  inferred 
that  the  authorities  at  Jerusalem  determined  to  follow 
the  scattered  society  and  exterminate  it,  by  making  each 
local  synagogue  a  centre  of  anti-Christian  zeal.  The 
defection  of  Saul,  however  (in  a.d.  35  or  36),  seems  to 
have  robbed  them  at  once  of  their  leading  spirit  and  their 
chief  instrument,  and  restored  peace  to  the  endangered 
Church.  Meanwhile,  the  new  Way  was  beginning  to  be 
known  outside  the  limits  of  strict  Judaism.  The  scattered 
converts  had  reached  Samaria,  Damascus,  Phoenicia, 
Cyprus,  and  Antioch.  The  evangelisation  of  Samaria 
by  the  deacon  Philip  involved  a  great  abandonment  of 
principle  and  prejudice.  The  Samaritans,  a  mixed  popu- 
lation, descended  in  part  from  colonists  imported  from 
the  provinces  of  Assyria  in  the  eighth  century,  and  inter- 
married with  Jews  who  escaped  deportation,  were  all  the 
more  bitterly  hated  by  genuine  Jews  for  the  claim  which 
they  made  to  a  share  in  the  religious  inheritance  of  Israel. 
Worshipping  Jehovah  on  Mount  Gerizim,  and  using  the 
Pentateuch  as  their  Bible,  they  were  affected  (as  the 
story  of  Simon  Magus  and  the  early  history  of  Gnosticism 
show)  by  influences  traceable  to  the  far  East.  They 
expected  a  Messiah,  but  the  people  of  the  Messiah 
regarded  them  as  heretics  and  schismatics ;  and  when 
Philip,  backed  by  the  Apostles,  decided  to  neglect  this 
prejudice  and  preach  that  in  Christ  the  Jewish  and 
Samaritan  hopes  were  alike  fulfilled,  the  first  definite 
step  was  taken  towards  realising  the  catholicity  of  the 
Church.  A  step  somewhat  parallel  in  importance  was 
the  consent  of  S.  Peter  to  associate  with  and  baptize  the 
Gentile  soldier  Cornelius  ;  but  significant  as  this  event 
was  in  its  relation  to  S.  Peter's  own  convictions,  it  did 
not  represent  a  final  victory  of  principle.  That  victory 
was  not  to  be  won  in  Palestine :  it  was  effectually  pre- 
pared for  by  the  Christians  of  Antiocli. 
Tlie  first  Gentile  Christians. — Antioch,  the  metropolis  of 
B 


18       CHURCH    HISTORY   TO    A.D.    325 

Syria^  lay  fifteen  miles  from  the  mouth  of  the  Orontes 
and  from  its  seaport  Seleucia.  One  of  the  most  mag- 
nificent and  wealthy  cities  of  the  ancient  world  and 
a  centre  of  world-wide  commerce,  it  had  a  large  Jewish 
population,  living  necessarily  in  close  contact  with  Greek 
customs  and  ideas.  Here  a  considerable  number  of  the 
refugees  from  Jerusalem  found  a  home  and  an  oppor- 
tunity for  propagating  the  faith.  It  would  perhaps 
have  been  hard  to  conceal  a  movement  so  vigorous 
from  those  of  the  Greek  citizens  who  had  any  sympathy 
with  Judaism  :  the  teachers  of  Antioch  were  far-sighted 
enough  to  make  it  known  to  them  deliberately.  The 
admission  of  a  body  of  Greeks  to  the  Church  was  soon 
reported  at  Jerusalem,  where,  like  the  Samaritan  mission 
of  Philip  and  the  conversion  of  Cornelius,  it  disturbed 
the  conscience  of  the  community.  Their  delegate  Bar- 
nabas— himself  a  Levite — was  convinced  by  what  he  saw 
that  the  new  departure  was  justified  by  its  results,  and 
that  the  opening  offered  to  the  Brotherhood  at  Antioch 
ought  to  be  followed  up  with  the  utmost  energy.  He 
therefore  resolved  to  make  use  of  a  convert  whom  the 
Church  had  not  yet  learned  to  trust ;  and  by  bringing 
S.  Paul  from  his  retirement  at  Tarsus,  he  prepared  the 
way  for  the  inclusion  of  Gentiles  in  the  Church,  not  on 
sufferance,  but  as  of  right. 

S.  Paul  already  believed  that  the  scope  of  his  mission 
was  to  be  wider  than  the  Jewish  world,  and  the  year 
which  he  now  spent  in  Antioch  was  a  prelude,  serving  to 
mature  his  ambitions  and  acquaint  him  with  his  future 
helpers. 

Missionary  -work  of  S,  Paul. — Tarsus,  the  birthplace  of 
the  Apostle,  lay  on  a  great  and  ancient  highway  that 
united  the  eastern  and  western  worlds.  Not  far  eastward 
was  the  great  barrier  range  of  Taurus  and  the  narrow 
pass  known  as  the  Cilician  Gates,  the  narrow  entry 
through  which  the  merchants,  soldiers,  and  adminis- 
trators of  the  Roman  empire  came  and  went.  The 
associations  of  the  place  were  such  as  would  draw  a 
man's  interest  and  imagination  westward,  and  the  cir- 
cumstances of  S.  Paul's  birth  and  education  there  seem 
thus  to  have  fitted  him  in  a  special  way  for  framing  and 


THE    APOSTOLIC   AGE  IS 

carrying  out  a  great  conception  of  travel  and  teaching. 
To  a  Jew  the  world  centred  in  Jerusalem  and  had  its 
circumference  in  the  settlements  of  the  Dispersion. 
S.  Paul  was  a  Jew,  but  he  was  also  a  Roman  citizen, 
owning  a  status  derived  from  Rome  and  privileges  valid 
throughout  the  empire.  To  him,  therefore,  his  mission 
to  the  Gentiles  was  a  mission  to  the  whole  world  :  it 
aimed,  that  is,  at  making  the  Church  as  universal  as  the 
empire. 

'I'he  working  of  this  great  ambition^  which  S.  Paul's 
letters  sufficiently  illustrate,  may  be  traced  in  the 
methods  and  routes  adopted  by  the  Apostle.  Later 
missionaries  have  often  taken  in  hand  the  conversion 
of  single  districts,  working  in  town  and  country  alike  : 
S.  Paul  saw  that  in  the  empire  ideas  moved  and  spread 
with  great  rapidity  whenever  they  took  hold  on  the 
cities.  He  therefore  worked  chiefly  at  these  central 
points,  and  never  moved  far  from  the  chief  lines  of 
communication. 

S.  Paul's  first  journey. — The  plan  of  his  first  journey 
(a.d.  47)  is  not  known  to  us,  nor  did  S.  Luke  know  it  : 
whatever  it  was,  an  attack  of  illness  (the  '  thorn  in  the 
flesh ')  combined  with  other  difficulties  to  prevent  S.  Paul 
from  carrying  it  out.  In  the  event  the  Apostle,  after  a 
few  months  spent  in  Cyprus,  the  home  of  his  companion 
Barnabas  and  other  Antiochene  converts,  restricted  him- 
self to  working  in  a  group  of  towns  in  the  south-west 
corner  of  the  Roman  province  of  Galatia,  and  founding 
those  Galatian  churches  to  which  he  had  afterwards 
occasion  to  write.  His  procedure  now,  and  throughout 
his  career  as  a  missionary,  was  to  present  himself  first 
of  all  before  the  local  synagogues  and  speak  as  a  Jew  to 
Jews  ;  for  although  he  was  aiming  ultimately  at  the  con- 
version of  the  Gentile  world,  he  wished  to  build  every- 
where, if  possible,  on  a  Jewish  basis  (Acts  xiii.  4G ;  cf. 
iii.  26)  ;  where  this  was  impossible,  the  responsibility  waf 
to  rest  on  the  Jews  themselves.  The  story  of  the  first 
journey  contains  typical  instances  of  the  official  Jewish 
opposition  by  which  the  Apostle's  ^turning  to  the  Gen- 
tiles' was  justified.  Converts  were  made  everywhere ;  but 
as  soon  as  their  number  became  considerable,  a  violent 


20      CHURCH   HISTORY   TO   A.D.    325 

official  reaction  was  set  up.  The  synagogue  was  closed 
to  the  preaching  of  Christ.  The  Gentile  populace  was 
instigated  to  join  in  the  opposition,  and  S.  Paul  either 
devoted  himself  to  instructing  non-Jews  or  passed  on  to 
another  city.  Orthodox  Judaism  was  closely  organised  ; 
persecution  followed  him  from  one  synagogue  to  the 
next,  and  was  sometimes  ready  to  meet  his  arrival 
(Acts  xvii.  6 ;  cf.  xxi.  27). 

Second  and  third  journeys. — The  scheme  of  the  second 
journey  (a.d.  49-51),  as  S.  Paul  framed  it,  was  wide,  but 
it  was  overruled  in  favour  of  a  still  larger  enterprise. 
The  intended  journey  through  the  great  towns  of  the 
western  Asiatic  coastlands  had  to  take  a  wider  circle, 
passing  along  the  Romeward  route  as  far  as  Philippi,  and 
thence  southward  as  far  as  Athens  and  the  centre  of 
Greek  commerce,  Corinth.  When  S.  Paul  had  returned 
to  Antioch  after  finishing  this  great  enterprise,  he  found 
himself  responsible  for  the  well-being  of  two  considerable 
groups  of  churches — the  Galatian  societies  in  the  east, 
and  those  of  Greece  in  the  west.  He  was  now  to  find  a 
centre  from  which  he  could  oversee  the  progress  of  these 
widely  separated  communities ;  and  in  Ephesus  he  found 
both  this  and  the  opportunity  for  beginning  the  work 
which  on  his  second  journey  he  had  wished  to  do. 
During  the  period  of  between  two  and  three  years  (52-55) 
spen^  in  Ephesus,  *^the  whole  of  Asia  {i.e.  the  western 
part  of  Asia  Minor)  heard  the  Word  of  God,'  and  S.  Luke 
is  at  pains  to  impress  on  his  readers  the  success  and 
importance  of  the  work  done.  But  S.  Paul  did  not  mean 
to  settle  permanently  here.  Through  the  Jews  whom 
trade  or  Roman  police  measures  scattered  from  the  capital 
eastward  (such  as  were  Aquila  and  Priscilla),  he  had 
knowledge  of  the  growth  of  a  Christian  community  in 
Rome  itself.  He  was  well  acquainted  with  many  of  its 
members,  and  had  sent  them  a  treatise  to  supply  the 
place  of  his  personal  mediation  in  the  struggle  between 
the  Jewish  and  the  Gentile  elements  among  them.  His 
ambition  had  long  drawn  him  towards  the  capital  of  the 
world,  and  it  was  to  be  satisfied  in  an  unexpected  way. 
When  the  riot  in  the  theatre  at  Ephesus  had  made  it 
prudent  for  him  to  leave  the  city,  after  a  few  months 


THE   APOSTOLIC   AGE  21 

spent  in  Greece  S.  Paul  began  to  make  his  way  back 
to  Jerusalem  for  the  feast  of  Pentecost. 

Arrest  and  first  imprisonment. — There  it  was  already 
known  to  the  Church  that  Jewish  feeling  was  running 
high  against  the  Apostle  of  the  Gentiles^  and  he  was 
advised  to  make  public  exhibition  of  his  orthodoxy  by 
an  act  of  ceremonial  solemnity.  But  the  Jews  foiled 
this  policy  by  an  appeal  to  popular  passion ;  and  a  false 
charge  of  having  introduced  Gentiles  into  the  Temple 
would  have  cost  S.  Paul  his  life,  but  for  the  intervention 
of  Roman  soldiers.  For  the  sake  of  public  order  the 
Apostle  was  hurried  away  to  Csesarea,  and  there  he 
was  kept  through  the  slackness  and  corruption  of  Roman 
officials  for  two  full  years  (56-68).  During  his  travels 
he  had  often  had  occasion  to  use  the  protection  which 
Roman  law  guaranteed  to  those  who  held  the  Roman 
franchise :  it  had  saved  him  from  some  indignities  and 
embarrassed  the  local  magistrates  at  Philippi ;  it  had 
saved  him  from  the  Jews  of  Corinth  ;  it  had  stood  between 
him  and  an  act  of  summary  injustice  at  Jerusalem,  Now 
it  made  a  way  for  his  removal  from  Csesarea,  where  it 
was  clear  that  he  stood  little  chance  of  fair  treatment : 
as  Festus  said,  '  he  might  be  set  at  liberty,'  but,  in  fact, 
he  had  remained  two  years  in  captivity.  Every  citizen 
had  one  chance  of  appeal  which  no  magistrate  dared  to 
disregard,  and  of  this  chance  S.  Paul  now  availed  him- 
self :  he  appealed  to  Caesar ;  and,  after  an  adventurous 
journey,  was  brought  to  the  capital  of  the  empire.  Here 
he  remained  in  ^custodia  militaris'  for  two  years,  teaching, 
organising,  and  writing,  till  a  long-delayed  decision  set 
him  once  more  at  liberty  (2  Tim.  iv.  16,  17).  His  sub- 
sequent movements  are  hard  to  trace.  When  he  wrote 
to  the  church  of  Colossae  and  to  Philemon  the  Colossian, 
he  was  intending  to  pay  a  first  visit  to  that  church  :  we 
hear  of  his  being  in  Crete,  Miletus,  Ephesus,  Troas,  and 
of  his  intention  to  pass  a  winter  at  Nicopolis,  on  the 
Greek  coast  opposite  Brundusium.  His  hopes  were  still 
moving  westward  towards  the  Roman  colonies  in  Spain,* 

1  See  Rom.  xv.  24.  Clement  of  Rome  speaks  of  S.  Paul  as 
travelling  '  to  the  extremity  of  the  West ' :  the  Muratorian  frag- 
ment (c.  A.D.  180)  says  that  he  went  to  Spain.      BQs  friend 


22      CHURCH    HISTORY   TO   A.D.    325 

but  the  outbreak  of  the  Nerouiau  persecution  in  a.d.  64 
probably  prevented  their  realisation.  Either  in  this  or 
the  following-  year^  the  thirty  years  of  S.  Paul's  apostle- 
ship  were  crowned  by  martyrdom  at  Rome. 

S.  Paul  and  tlie  Jewish  Law. — Christianity  had  from 
its  earliest  begiuning-s  to  set  itself  in  opposition  to 
the  received  conceptions  of  religion.  The  teaching 
of  our  Lord  had  its  negative  side,  for  it  roused  men 
to  free  themselves  from  the  traditions  and  ^command- 
ments of  men/  by  which  Pharisaism  had  'made  the 
commandment  of  God  of  none  effect.'  It  was  necessary 
that  men  should  learn  to  seek  for  the  substance  of 
religion  in  spiritual  freedom,  and  not  in  mechanical 
observances.  The  stern  protests  of  our  Lord  against 
the  burdensome  unrealities  of  Jewish  technical  righteous- 
ness were  a  scandal  to  the  authorities,  who  regarded 
them  as  expressions  of  an  ignorant  antagonism  to  the 
respectable  traditions  of  the  learned.  The  Crucifixion 
was  an  open  proof  that  Judaism  was  incapable  of  spiritual 
reform  from  within.  But  the  real  relation  of  the  religion 
of  Jesus  Christ  to  Judaism  was  in  no  way  understood 
until  the  conflicts  of  S.  Paul  with  himself  and  with 
Judaism,  both  within  and  witliout  the  Church,  had  made 
the  issue  clear. 

Tlie  question  at  issue, — The  extension  of  the  Church  in 
Antioch  raised  a  practical  difficulty,  behind  which  there 
lay  a  question  affecting  the  ultimate  principle  of  the 
Church's  existence.  The  practical  diflficulty  came  from 
the  necessity  of  adjusting  the  conditions  of  church  life  in 
Antioch,  so  as  not  to  conflict  with  the  narrower  circum- 
stances of  the  Jewish  mother  Church  at  Jerusalem.  In 
this  wider  sphere  a  new  gospel  was  being  preached  to  Gen- 
tiles ;  to  the  Christians  of  Jerusalem,  it  had  never  occurred 
to  offer  it  on  any  but  the  old  terms  :  to  be  a  Christian, 
they  held  that  one  must  first  become  a  Jew.  This  concrete 
question  as  to  the  terms  of  admission  into  the  Church  was, 
however,  only  the  occasion  of  controversy.  No  settlement 
or  compromise  on  this  point  could  save  the  Church  from 

Crescens  visited  Gaul  (according  to  one  reading  of  2  Tim.  iv.  10) : 
whether  S.  Paul  ever  went  so  far  westward  cannot  be  deter- 
Tnined. 


THE   APOSTOLIC   AGE  23 

having  to  decide  the  larger  question  of  principle  which 
lay  behind,  as  to  the  relation  between  the  grace  of  Jesus 
Christ  and  the  '  works '  of  the  old  covenant.  Had  this 
not  been  determined_,  it  might  have  been  possible  for  the 
Church  to  compromise  with  its  Gentile  converts,  and  yet 
retain  a  superstition  in  favour  of  those  who  came  into  it 
through  the  Jewish  door.  In  reality,  it  was  with  the 
Jews  that  a  compromise  was  made  ;  and  the  type  of  Chris- 
tianity professed  by  them,  so  far  from  being  held  to  be 
the  more  perfect  way,  soon  fell  into  the  background. 
This  result  must  be  ascribed  directly  to  the  influence  of 
S.  Paul.  His  part  in  the  technical  controversy  as  to  the 
terms  of  Church  membership  may  be  first  described. 
It  should  be  remembered  that  our  knowledge  of  it  is 
derived  from  two  sources — from  S.  Paul's  own  letters, 
written  in  the  heat  of  the  actual  dispute,  and  from 
S.  Luke's  narrative,  written  many  years  later,  and  giWng 
us  a  picture  in  which  the  sharpness  of  the  contest  is  not 
unnaturally  toned  down. 

The  Apostolic  Council,  A.D.  49. — On  returning  from 
his  first  missionary  journey  to  Antioch,  S.  Paul  con- 
tinued, with  a  confidence  now  justified  by  experience, 
his  work  among  the  Gentiles.  He  was  soon  inter- 
rupted by  certain  zealots  from  Jerusalem,  who  insisted 
that  circumcision  was  an  indispensable  qualification  for 
Church  membership.  Their  views  found  acceptance  to 
such  a  degree  that  an  appeal  from  them  to  the  chiefs 
of  the  whole  Church  became  necessary.  S.  Paul  and 
Barnabas,  accompanied  by  the  uncircumcised  convert 
Titus,  went  up  to  Jerusalem  to  relate  the  success  of 
their  missions  among  the  Gentiles,  and  to  ask  whether 
they  were  to  be  hindered  by  the  restrictions  on  which 
orthodox  Judaism  laid  such  stress.  A  council  of  the 
Apostles,  together  with  the  whole  Church  of  Jeru- 
salem, after  a  vehement  discussion,  decided  wholly 
in  favour  of  S.  Paul.  The  decree  pronounced  by  S. 
James  in  their  name  recommended  Gentile  converts  to 
make  only  such  concessions  to  Jewish  feeling  as  would 
make  it  possible  for  the  two  sections  of  the  Church 
to  live  together  without  friction.  In  the  admission 
of    proselytes  to   the  Jew    communities,    it   had    been 


24      CHURCH    HISTORY   TO   A.D.    326 

the  rule  to  enjoin  on  them  certain  regulations  about 
food  and  marriage^  known  as  the  '  commandments  of 
Noah.'  Three  of  these  were  now  enjoined  upon  the 
Gentile  converts  to  Christianity :  they  were  to  use 
such  food  as  a  conscientious  Jew  need  not  scruple  to 
share^  and  not  to  marry  within  prohibited  degrees  of 
kinship. 

Further  disputes. — The  effect  of  this  decision,  of  which 
singularly  little  is  heard  in  subsequent  history,  was  hardly 
as  complete  as  was  hoped.  Antioch  was  once  more  visited 
by  emissaries  of  the  Judaising  party,  who  claimed  to 
represent  the  head  of  the  Church  in  Jerusalem  ;  and  so 
little  had  the  conference  done  to  quiet  the  scruples  of 
the  Hebrew  section  of  the  Church,  that  on  this  occasion 
Barnabas,  and  even  S.  Peter  (according  to  one  theory 
of  the  order  of  events),^  abandoned  their  new  principles, 
and  stood  out  against  the  Catholicism  preached  by  S. 
Paul.  The  new  dissension  had,  it  would  seem,  little 
permanent  effect  on  the  predominantly  Gentile  Church 
of  Antioch  ;  but  its  disturbing  effects  were  felt  through- 
out all  the  Churches  which  the  Apostle  of  the  Gentiles 
had  founded ;  and  in  the  letters  sent  by  him  to  the 
Galatians,  Corinthians,  Romans,  and  Philippians,  we 
have  a  record  of  a  struggle  in  which  the  very  existence 
of  a  Catholic  Church  was  at  stake.  At  Corinth,  four 
parties  were  soon  formed — one  faithful  to  S.  Paul,  and 
one  setting  up  the  Alexandrine  ApoUos  as  its  model ;  a 
third,  possibly  a  knot  of  Judaisers,  claiming  to  represent 
S.  Peter,  and  a  fourth  which  disclaimed  all  authority 
but  that  of  Christ.  The  interest  of  the  struggle  here 
was  mainly  a  personal  one  :  if  the  dissidents  could  be 
made  to  feel  the  reality  of  S.  Paul's  apostleship,  the  chief 
point  would  be  gained.  To  the  Philippians  a  somewhat 
similar  appeal  was  sent  from  the  founder  of  their  Church 
while  confined  in  Rome :  they  were  to  remember  that 
he  was  a  true  Hebrew,  and  that  none  of  his  antagonists 

1  If  Gal.  ii.  is  not  a  continuous  story,  the  dissension  between 
S.  Peter  and  S.  Paul  (w.  11-14 ;  cf.  Acts  xv.  1)  may  have  pre- 
ceded the  apostolic  council  (vv.  1-10).  Cf.  Hastings'  Dictionary 
of  the  Bible,  art.  '  Chronology  of  the  New  Testament, '  vol.  i. 
p.  424,  col.  1. 


THE   APOSTOLIC    AGE  26 

— 'enemies/  he  calls  them^  ^ of  the  cross  of  Christ' — 
could  claim  to  be  truer  to  the  hope  of  Israel  than  he. 

Epistles  to  Galatians  and  Romans. — But  the  Galatian 
and  Roman  letters  alone  contain  S.  Paul's  full  exposi- 
tion of  the  ultimate  principles  on  which  his  conviction 
rested.  The  time  and  place  at  which  the  former  was 
written  are  matters  of  controversy :  it  was  called  forth, 
however_,  by  the  news  that  the  group  of  Churches  in 
south-west  Galatia  had  been  misled  into  some  general 
expression  of  their  desire  to  impose  on  themselves  and 
their  converts  greater  burdens  than  those  which  the 
apostolic  council  had  prescribed.  S.  Paul  answered 
them  with  passionate  earnestness.  They  are  forgetting, 
he  tells  them,  that  the  coming  of  Christ  was  the  be- 
ginning of  a  new  epoch.  The  law  was  in  its  essence 
transitory,  and  its  bondage  only  a  preparation  for  the 
freedom  of  the  life  of  faith.  In  trying  to  carry  over 
the  external  restrictions  of  the  old  dispensation  into 
the  new,  they  were  attempting  an  impossible  union 
between  two  incompatible  kinds  of  religion,  between  a 
religion  of  slavery  and  a  religion  of  sonship.  The  error 
was  not  one  of  policy :  by  exalting  the  law,  it  taught 
men  to  think  lightly  of  the  change  brought  into  life 
by  Jesus  Christ,  aijd  set  the  whole  work  of  grace  in  a 
wrong  perspective.  To  gain  the  true  perspective,  S.  Paul 
had  surrendered  everything :  he  had  passed  through  a 
spiritual  revolution  that  was  painful  in  proportion  to  his 
strength  ;  and  now  it  was  bitter  to  him  to  find  men  lightly 
abandoning  what  had  cost  him  so  much.  The  letter  to  the 
Romans,  written  in  a.d.  55  or  56,  shortly  after  that  to  the 
Galatians,  works  out  the  same  ideas  with  less  personal 
emotion,  but  with  even  greater  intellectual  fervour. 
There  are  indications  which  make  it  possible  that  the 
main  body  of  this  letter,  like  the  Catholic  Epistles,  was 
intended  for  the  Church  at  large,  rather  than  for  the 
single  Church  whose  name  it  now  bears.  It  is,  indeed, 
rather  a  treatise  than  a  letter:  addressed  to  both  sections 
of  the  Church,  it  is  intended  to  meet  the  activity  ot 
Judaising  Christians  by  a  detailed  and  positive  exposition 
of  the  righteousness  which  comes  by  faith,  and  to  remind 
the  Gentiles  of  the  real  prerogatives  of  the  people  to 


26      CHURCH    HISTORY    TO   A.  D.    326 

whom  this  inheritance  was  first  promised.  The  main 
line  of  argument,  in  its  relation  to  current  controversy, 
may  be  briefly  indicated  thus  :  The  whole  world,  Jew 
and  Gentile  alike,  is  deformed  by  sin.  To  make  men 
righteous,  something  is  needed  which  can  free  them  from 
this  deformity.  The  law  (to  which  the  Jewish  Christians 
would  now  make  every  one  subject),  holy  as  it  is,  can 
only  serve  to  make  men  conscious  of  guilt  and  failure  ; 
but  the  love  of  God  has  intervened  to  make  men  capable 
of  putting  oif  their  old  selves,  and  developing  into  the 
fulness  of  a  new  life,  in  which  the  ruling  principle  is  not 
sin,  but  the  sense  and  reality  of  sonship  to  God.  This 
new  life  starts  in  faith,  and  even  its  rudiments  are  so 
generously  recognised  by  God  that  He  removes  the  con- 
demnation of  sin  at  the  very  outset  from  those  who  have 
begun  to  live  it.  Now  this  ^justification '  is  exactly  what 
life  under  the  old  law  could  never  give  :  it  was  indeed 
never  meant  to  give  it,  for  the  whole  story  of  the  Jews, 
from  the  promise  made  to  Abraham  onward,  has  been 
that  of  a  people  waiting  for  the  fulfilment  of  a  hope,  for 
a  promised  '^inheritance.'  That  promise  is  now  fulfilled, 
and  the  new  era  has  begun. 

End  of  the  controversy.— The  further  history  of  this  all- 
important  contest  is  singularly  short.  .It  must  have  ceased 
almost  at  once  to  be  severe  enough  to  menace  the  Church's 
unity.  The  Pauline  doctrine  prevailed,  and  its  opponents 
found  themselves,  as  we  shall  see,  a  dwindling  minority 
with  an  ever-weakening  hold  on  the  Christian  part  of 
their  creed.  Even  at  the  end  of  S.  Paul's  life,  the 
Judaism  which  set  itself  against  him  had  taken  an  en- 
tirely different  colour.  Such  false  brethren  as  those  of 
the  Galatian  letter,  who  objected  to  the  existence  of  un- 
circuincised  Christi;ins,  are  no  longer  heard  of:  in  their 
place  we  find  men  who  profess  doctrines  and  use  practices 
quite  foreign  to  orthodox  Judaism.  The  Colossian  letter, 
and  those  to  Timothy  and  Titus,  speak  of  ascetic  teach- 
ings about  eating  and  marriage,  burdensome  injunctions 
about  the  observance  of  days,  unsound  theories  about 
the  place  and  influence  of  angelic  beings  in  the  world. 
This  is  quite  a  new  strain  of  heresy,  and  it  seems  to 
indicate    that   from    about   the    year   60   a   current  of 


THE   APOSTOLIC   AGE  27 

influences  very  like  those  of  thie  Essenes  had  begun  to 
make  itself  felt  in  Asia  Minor  and  Crete  (Tit.  i.  10, 
1  Tim.  i.  3-7).  The  promoters  of  these  doctrines  were 
indeed  Jews^  but  the  way  in  which  S.  Paul  meets  them 
shows  how  little  they  had  in  common  with  his  first 
Jewish  antagonists.  Nothing  is  now  heard  of  the  old 
antitheses  between  law  and  grace,  works  and  faith  :  the 
danger  is  treated  as  primarily  a  moral  one,  an  attempt 
of  insincere  and  corrupt  persons  to  lower  the  standard 
of  Christian  living  to  the  level  of  their  own  unhealthy 
creed . 

Church  life  in  the  Apostolic  Age.  —  Christianity  is 
essentially  an  inward  power  in  the  lives  of  individual 
men,  quickening  and  transforming  them  through  the 
manifold  activity  of  the  Holy  Spirit ;  but  no  less  essen- 
tially it  demands  outward  and  visible  expression  in  the 
corporate  life  of  the  unity  of  believers.  From  the 
beginning,  to  come  into  the  Church  meant  primarily  a 
spiritual  change,  but  it  meant  also  a  readjustment  of 
the  rest  of  life,  intellectual  and  social ;  for  the  Church 
was  to  all  its  members  an  association  for  worship,  a  school 
of  instruction,  and  an  organisation  for  social  welfare. 

1.  Worship. — The  earliest  Christians  possessed  no  build- 
ings specially  set  apart  for  religious  uses  :  their  meetings 
were  held  in  private  houses,  especially  in  the  large  rooms 
attaclied  to  the  houses  of  the  wealthier  members.  At 
Jerusalem  in  the  earliest  period,  the  meetings  for  prayers 
and  the  breaking  of  the  bread  were  held  every  day,  but 
for  the  majority  of  churches  a  weekly  meeting  became 
the  settled  rule.  It  was  on  the  first  day  of  the  week 
that  the  Corinthians  were  to  make  their  offering  for  the 
famine-stricken  Church  of  Jerusalem  :  on  the  same  day 
the  Church  of  Troas  met  for  the  Eucliarist  and  to  hear 
S.  Paul  preach.  Before  the  end  of  the  first  century,  this 
weekly  festival  of  the  Resurrection  was  generally  called 
the  Lord's  day.  While  the  Church  and  the  synagogue 
worked  together  side  by  side,  the  Sabbath  would  be 
spent  in  the  synagogue  ;  but  with  the  gradual  separation 
of  the  Church  from  Jewish  associations,  the  Sabbath 
lapsed  into  oblivion.  As  early  as  a.d.  110,  Ignatius  con- 
trasts the  two  institutions,  and  tells  the  Magnesians  that 


28      CHURCH    HISTORY   TO   A.D.   325 

the  true  Christian  ^no  longer  observes  Sabbaths,  but 
fashions  his  life  after  the  Lord's  day,  on  which  our  life 
arose  through  Him.'  The  main  outlines  of  worship 
were  taken  over  by  the  Church  from  the  services  of  the 
synagogue  :  the  Old  Testament  was  read  and  expounded 
(it  must  be  remembered  that  the  first  generations  of 
Christians  had  no  other  Bible),  psalms  were  sung,  and 
prayer  offered.  But  to  these  elements  the  Church  added 
two  that  were  specifically  Christian. 

(a)  The  Eucharist  and  the  Agape  or  Love  Feast. — The 
usage  of  the  earliest  days  was  to  reproduce  the  whole 
circumstances  of  the  occasion  on  which  the  Eucharist  was 
instituted.  The  actual  breaking  of  the  bread  and  blessing 
of  the  cup  were  therefore  preceded,  as  in  the  Upper 
Room,  by  a  common  meal.  But  this  natural  union  of 
sacred  and  secular  elements  was  soon  found  (1  Cor.  xi. 
20-23)  only  too  liable  to  abuse ;  and  the  Agape,  which 
only  existed  for  the  sake  of  the  Eucharist,  had  to  be 
separated  from  it,  and  to  become  an  element  rather  of  the 
social  than  of  the  devotional  life  of  the  Church.  With 
this  development  is  to  be  connected  the  change  of  usage 
which  placed  the  Eucharist  at  the  beginning  of  the  day, 
a  change  which  the  allusions  of  early  literature  do  not 
enable  us  to  trace  with  accuracy,  but  may  with  some 
probability  be  assigned  to  the  first  century.  The  deacon- 
esses whom  Pliny,  in  a.d.  112,  put  to  the  torture  told  him 
that  the  Christians  met  first  before  daylight  to  bind 
themselves  to  innocency  of  life  by  a  sacramentum,  and 
later  in  the  day  for  a  harmless  ordinary  meal ;  and 
though  Pliny  meant  by  '  sacramentum '  a  solemn  form  of 
religious  promise,  the  whole  expression  strongly  suggests 
that  the  reference  is  to  the  act  of  communion.  Nothing 
positive  can  be  said  as  to  the  early  history  of  the  rule 
which  in  later  times  forbade  the  use  of  other  food  before 
the  Eucharist.  The  idea  of  fasting  as  a  preparation  for 
religious  duties  can  be  traced  back  to  the  time  of  the 
Apostles  (Acts  xiii.  2)  ;  and  the  Didache,  or  Doctrine  of  the 
Twelve  Apostles,  a  Palestinian  manual,  perhaps  as  old  as 
the  year  a.d.  100,  enjoins  such  a  fast  in  preparation  for 
baptism  ;  but  it  is  precarious  to  press  these  analogies. 

The  two  liturgical  elements  in  the  Eucharistic  service 


THE   APOSTOLIC   AGE  29 

of  which  we  have  first-century  information,  are  the  com- 
memoration of  the  Institution,  of  which  the  language  of 
S.  Paul  to  the  Corinthians  gives  clear  evidence,  and  the 
prayer  of  the  presiding  minister  for  the  Church  and  the 
world.  The  letter  of  Clement  of  Rome  to  the  Corinthians 
contains  a  prayer  of  this  kind,  which,  in  its  general  accord- 
ance with  the  fixed  formulae  of  later  days,  bears  significant 
witness  to  the  continuity  of  liturgical  development.  The 
first  supplications  are  for  the  Christian  body :  for  in- 
crease of  knowledge,  for  deliverance  from  tribulation, 
and  the  supply  of  temporal  and  spiritual  needs  ;  then  the 
prayer,  ascribing  all  power  to  God,  makes  special  inter- 
cession for  the  rulers  of  the  empire.  His  delegates,  and 
ends  with  an  ascription  of  praise  to  the  Father  through 
Jesus  Christ. 

If  the  evidence  of  the  Didache  may  be  assigned  to  the 
first  century,  it  may  be  added  that  this  document  pre- 
scribes for  the  Palestinian  church,  from  which  it  probably 
came,  usages  of  a  striking  singularity.  The  thanksgiving 
for  the  cup  precedes  that  for  the  broken  bread,  and  no 
mention  is  made  of  the  words  of  Institution  ;  although 
the  fact  that  the  bread  is  referred  to  as  already  broken 
may  indicate  that  they  have  been  previously  recited. 
The  other  injunctions  of  the  Didache  are  less  surprising  : 
the  Eucharist  is  only  to  be  given  to  the  baptized ;  it  is 
to  be  preceded  by  the  confession  of  sins,  and  by  the 
reconciliation  of  any  who  have  a  dispute  with  one 
another. 

(b)  The  exercise  of  spiritual  gifts. — The  whole  energy 
of  the  Christian  life  depends,  S.  Paul  taught,  on  spiritual 
endowments  specially  given.  Whether  it  be  the  adminis- 
tration of  the  society  or  subordinate  church  work,  or 
instruction  or  meditation  that  occupies  the  individual, 
each  has  his  Charisma.  Most  of  these  Charismata  were 
what  we  should  call  special  talents,  dependent  for  their 
efficiency  on  the  energy  of  their  possessor.  But  the 
gift  of  prophecy  and  the  gift  of  '  tongues '  were  diff^erent. 
Prophecy,  indeed,  was  not  in  its  normal  form  an  ecstatic 
utterance  beyond  personal  control :  '  the  spirits  of  the 
prophets  are  subject  to  the  prophets';  but  the  gift  of 
tongues  appears  (for  positive  knowledge  is  here  out  of 


30      CHURCH    HISTORY   TO   A.D.    326 

our  reach)  to  have  consisted  in  a  sort  of  passive  state  of 
possession,  in  which  things  incomprehensible,  at  any  rate 
to  the  hearers,  were  spoken.  S.  Paul  frankly  recognises 
the  reality  of  this  strange  phenomenon,  but  uses  lan- 
guage about  it  which  amounts,  relatively  at  least,  to 
depreciation :  the  gifts  which  demand  the  conscious 
energy  of  service  are  put  high  above  it.  'i'he  use  of 
these  gifts,  however,  and  especially  that  of  prophecy, 
constituted,  by  the  side  of  the  normal  worship,  what  has 
been  called  a  ^liturgy  of  the  Holy  Spirit.'  How  long 
they  held  this  place,  it  would  again  be  easier  to  decide  if 
the  Didache  could  be  exactly  dated.  There  the  '^Apostles 
and  prophets '  (apparently  the  same  person  could  bear 
either  name)  form  a  special  kind  of  itinerant  ministry, 
so  itinerant  that  a  prophet  demanding  more  than  two 
days'  hospitality  must  needs  be  an  impostor  :  mysterious 
speech  and  symbolic  actions  parallel  to  those  of  the  old 
Jewish  prophets  are  to  be  expected  of  them. 

2.  Instruction. — During  S.  Paul's  long  stay  in  Ephesus, 
it  became  necessary  for  him  to  undertake  systematic 
teaching.  The  synagogue  was  closed  to  him ;  he 
therefore  hired  the  lecture-hall  of  Tyrannus,  and,  as  an 
old  reading  in  Acts  xix.  9  affirms,  taught  there  daily 
'from  the  fifth  to  the  tenth  hour,'  that  is,  from  the 
time  when  workmen  left  their  occupations  till  far  on 
into  the  night.  Teaching,  as.  distinct  from  exhorting,  is 
mentioned  in  the  Roman  and  Ephesian  Epistles  as  a 
special  type  of  Christian  work  ;  and  it  is  obvious  that  all 
kinds  of  converts  would  need  instruction  proportioned  to 
their  circumstances.  The  Jew  or  proselyte,  who  had 
already  been  instructed  to  worship  one  God  and  to 
understand  His  moral  claims  on  man,  would  need  less 
introductory  discipline  than  the  convert  from  paganism. 
The  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  gives  us  in  an  allusion  an 
outline  of  the  'first  principles  of  Christ'  in  which  new 
converts  were  educated :  there  was  laid  for  them  a 
foundation  of  repentance  from  dead  works,  and  of  faith 
toward  God,  of  the  doctrine  of  baptism,  and  of  laying  on 
of  hands,  and  of  resurrection  from  the  dead,  and  of  eternal 
judgment.  It  is  important  to  remember  that  the  faith 
was   thus   from  the    beginning   regarded   as   having   aa 


THE   APOSTOLIC   AGE  31 

intellectual  content_,  and  that  the  Church  had  to  reckon 
with  men's  minds  as  well  as  with  their  consciences ;  for 
it  was  this  necessity  that  gave  rise  both  to  Christian 
theology  and  to  a  large  proportion  of  Christian  litera- 
ture ;  more  precisely,  it  is  to  the  energy  of  the  apostolic 
age  in  teaching  that  we  owe  the  New  Testament. 

The  Gospels. — The  preface  to  S.  Luke's  Gospel  tells  us 
that  the  birth,  life,  teaching,  death,  and  resurrection  of 
Jesus  Christ  was  in  the  author's  day  the  subject  of 
catechetical  instruction,  and  that  many  persons  had 
already  committed  them  to  writing.  Parallel  to  this  is 
the  testimony  of  an  elder  of  the  apostolic  age,  preserved 
by  Papias  (who  wrote  early  in  the  second  century),  that 
S.  Peter  used  to  give  historical  instructions  on  the  life  of 
Christ  as  the  needs  of  his  hearers  demanded,  and  that 
on  these  instructions  S.  Mark  based  his  Gospel.  Even 
without  these  explicit  statements,  it  can  be  proved,  from 
the  close  similarity  which  unites  the  first  three  of  our 
Gospels,  that  a  Gospel  narrative,  which  was  the  basis  of 
all  three,  was  written  down  for  public  instruction  at  a 
very  early  date — a  date,  we  may  safely  say,  previous  to 
the  fall  of  Jerusalem  in  a.d.  70.  The  didactic  aim  and 
origin  of  the  Gospels  is  plain  also  from  their  differences  : 
the  peculiar  characteristic  of  S.  Matthew  being  his  anxiety 
to  teach  Jewish  converts  how  fully  Jewish  hopes  were 
fulfilled  in  Christ,  and  that  of  S.  Luke  to  emphasise, 
subtly  but  unmistakably,  the  universal  range  of  the 
message  of  redemption.  The  Gospel  of  S,  John  is  still 
more  doctrinal  in  purpose  :  it  is  a  picture  drawn  after  a 
lifetime  of  teaching.  The  narratives  of  the  synoptists 
are  carefully  selected  :  they  ,must  represent  only  a  fraction 
of  what  was  known  ;  but  that  of  S.  John  is  so  economised 
as  to  be  wholly  subordinate  to  the  teacher's  conception 
of  the  manifestation,  rejection,  and  acceptance  of  the 
Eternal  Word. 

The  Epistles, — The  Gospels  are  thus  the  permanent 
record  of  what  was  taught  in  the  first  age :  and  this  is 
even  more  obviously  true  of  the  Epistles.  Some  of  these 
deal  wholly  or  in  part  with  contemporary  affairs ;  but 
for  the  most  part,  they  were  meant  to  be  read  and 
circulated  as  permanent  standards  of  teaching.      Thus 


82      CHURCH    HISTORY   TO   A.D.    326 

the  Colossian  letter  was  meant  to  go  on  to  Laodicea^  and 
a  letter  to  Laodicea  was  meant  to  go  on  to  Colossae,  while 
those  to  the  Ephesians  and  Romans  bore  probably  from 
the  first  the  character  of  general  addresses  to  the  Church 
at  large ;  and  S.  Peter,  S.  James,  and  S.  John  sent  writ- 
ings of  a  fairly  general  character  to  Christians  scattered 
over  a  very  large  area.  The  anonymous  Epistle  to  the 
Hebrews  is  professedly  nothing  more  than  an  instruction 
supplementary  to  catechetical  teaching  already  received, 
and  forms  thus  an  interesting  parallel  to  the  third 
Gospel :  like  S.  Luke,  its  author  might  have  said  that 
he  wrote  '  that  ye  may  fully  know  the  certainty  of  the 
things  in  which  ye  have  been  instructed. ' 

3.  Social  Unity. — The  name  given  to  the  followers  of 
our  Lord  in  the  Gospels,  ^the  disciples,'  expresses  the 
single  relation  of  dependence  which  held  them  together 
during  His  earthly  life.  After  the  Pentecost  of  a.d.  29, 
the  manifold  life  of  the  body  of  disciples  expresses  itself 
in  the  variety  of  the  names  they  bear :  they  are  the 
'saints,*  the  ^Church  of  God,'  and  in  respect  of  their 
social  unity  '^the  brothers  or  brotherhood.'  The  close- 
ness of  the  new  social  tie  was  such  that  it  brought 
the  disciples  to  feel  responsible  (a)  for  the  use  of  their 
property,  (&)  for  their  conduct  in  general,  not  only  to 
God  and  their  consciences,  but  also  to  the  whole  body. 

(a)  Tlie  Cliurcli  and  private  property. — In  the  earliest 
chapters  of  the  Acts,  the  word  '  communion '  or  '  fellow- 
ship '  is  used  to  express  the  common  life  in  which  all  the 
Christians  of  Jerusalem  shared.  The  description  in 
Acts  ii.  42-45  does  not  suggest  a  system  of  organised 
socialism,  but  simply  that  each  man's  money  was  at  the 
disposal  of  any  one  of  his  fellow-converts  who  happened 
to  be  in  want :  the  common  enthusiasm  left  no  room 
for  private  self-interest.  These  generous  impulses  soon 
came  to  need  regulation :  in  Acts  iv.  35,  37,  and 
v.  2,  the  contributions  are  paid  into  a  common  fund, 
'  laid  at  the  Apostles*  feet. '  But  it  is  to  be  noted  that 
they  remained  absolutely  voluntary:  property  was  not 
abolished,  but  consecrated  with  a  new  sense  of  responsi- 
bility. At  the  same  time,  the  amount  of  money  in  the 
common  funds  was  so  considerable  that  it  was  possible  to 


THE   APOSTOLIC   AGE  33 

provide  from  it  a  common  table,  or  '^ daily  ministration' 
for  the  poorer  members_,  a  service  so  extensive  as  to  require 
the  appointment  of  seven  officials  for  its  regulation. 

This  'community  of  goods'  has  no  parallel  in  the 
apostolic  age  outside  Jerusalem  :  the  communism  of  the 
Essene  Jews,  with  which  it  has  been  compared,  diifered 
widely  from  it  in  being  compulsory  and  monastic.  It 
was,  moreover,  in  essence  a  temporary  arrangement: 
the  second  coming  of  Christ  was  believed  to  be  close 
at  hand,  and  that  expectation  must  have  co-operated 
strongly  with  the  new-born  social  instinct  of  the  Church 
to  cheapen  the  value  of  earthly  possessions  in  the  eyes 
of  His  disciples.  But  the  principle  of  fellowship  per- 
vaded the  whole  Church.  S.  James,  indeed,  writing 
not  long  before  the  fall  of  Jerusalem,  had  sternly  to 
rebuke  the  decay  of  this  spirit  and  the  increasing  selfish- 
ness of  the  rich ;  but  the  true  ideal,  constantly  upheld 
by  S.  Paul,i  was  a  real  force,  and  two  instances,  at  least, 
are  recorded  in  which  it  was  generously  realised.  In  the 
year  47  one  of  the  local  famines,  which  were  common  in 
Claudius'  reign,  caused  great  suffering  in  Judaea ;  and 
the  church  of  Antioch,  where  the  calamity  had  been 
foreseen,  recognising  its  duty  to  the  distressed  brethren, 
sent  S.  Paul  and  Barnabas  to  use  the  sum  it  had  been 
able  to  collect  in  distributing  food  among  the  sufferers. 
Again,  in  the  last  years  before  S.  Paul's  arrest,  a  wide 
scheme  of  benevolence  occupied  the  attention  of  the 
Pauline  churches.  The  increasing  poverty  of  the 
Christians  of  Jerusalem  was  made  the  opportunity  for 
a  great  corporate  act  of  self-denial ;  by  weekly  con- 
tributions in  the  churches  of  Galatia,  Asia,  Macedonia, 
and  Achaia,  a  large  sum  was  collected  and  brought  by 
delegates  to  Jerusalem.  ^The  stress  which  the  Apostle 
lays  on  this  collection  is  only  explained  when  we  regard 
it  as  the  emblem  and  the  instrument  of  the  corporate 
fellowship  of  the  locally  scattered  Christian  society.' ^ 

(b)  The  Church  and  moral  discipline, — All  societies  have 
some  need  of  discipline,  in  so  far  as  their  members  are 

1  Rom.  xii.  13 ;  1  Tim.  vi.  18 ;  of.  Heb.  xiii.  16. 

2  Armitage  Robinson,  in  Hastings'  Dictionary  of  the  Bible,  i.  461. 

C 


34      CHURCH    HISTORY   TO    A.D.    326 

committed  to  any  course  of  action  in  order  to  maintain 
their  qualifications  for  membership.  The  closer  the  tie 
of  corporate  union^  the  greater  are  the  demands  made 
on  the  loyalty  of  the  individual.  The  apostolic  ideal  of 
the  Church  conceived  it  as  a  body  of  men  deriving  all 
their  capacity  for  any  kind  of  good  from  one  Source, 
and  held  most  closely  together  in  their  common  re- 
sponsibility to  Him  and  to  one  another.  Consequently, 
for  all  who  were  ^called  to  be  saints,'  the  morality  of 
each  was  an  afi^air  in  which  the  whole  body  was  interested 
as  well  as  the  individual  conscience.  That  this  principle 
was  part  of  the  original  idea  of  the  Church  is  clear  from 
the  commission  given  by  our  Lord  to  the  Apostles  and 
the  whole  body  to  remit  and  retain  sins.  The  New 
Testament  shows  more  than  one  trace  of  its  practical 
application.  As  S.  John  taught  that  only  those  who 
'walk  in  the  light*  have  the  true  ^fellowship  one  with 
another,'  so  S.  Paul  more  than  once  cut  off  from  the 
actual  privileges  of  fellowship  men  who  had  been  guilty 
of  open  and  scandalous  misconduct.  At  Corinth_,  an  act 
of  gross  immorality  was  punished  by  such  excommunica- 
tion, as  were  HymenaBus  and  Philetus,  teachers  of  debas- 
ing doctrines  at  Ephesus.  The  punishment  is  described 
in  both  cases  in  similar  language  :  the  men  are  '  delivered 
to  Satan' ;  in  one  case  '  for  the  destruction  of  the  flesh.' 
It  is  inflicted  by  the  Apostle  '  in  the  name '  and  *  with 
the  power  of  our  Lord  Jesus,'  and  the  sentence  is  pro- 
nounced in  presence  of  the  whole  Church.  But  the 
object  of  discipline  was  always  (if  we  may  except  the 
mysterious  story  ol  Ananias  and  Sapphira)  to  restore 
the  fellowship  which  the  offence  had  interrupted.  As 
S.  Paul  advises  the  Galatians  to  bear  one  another's 
burdens  and  to  restore  the  lapsed  in  a  spirit  of  meekness, 
so  we  find  him  enjoining  the  public  restoration  of  the 
Corinthian  offender  'in  the  person  of  Christ.*  On  the 
other  hand,  S.  John  recognised  the  possibility  of  a  degree 
of  sin  which  may  put  it  out  of  the  Church's  power  even 
to  pray  for  its  forgiveness. 

Such  appear  to  have  been  the  elements  out  of  which 
the  later  disciplinary  system  was,  without  fundamental 
change  of  principle,  evolved.      That  confession  of  sin 


THE    APOSTOLIC    AGE  36 

must  precede  its  forgiveness  was,  of  course,  an  elementary 
principle.  It  is  uncertain  whether  the  public  acknow- 
ledgment of  sins,  which  by  the  third  century  had  become 
an  established  requirement  in  serious  cases,  existed  in 
the  first  age.  But  the  recommendation  of  S.  James  con- 
tains it  in  the  germ  ;  '  confess  your  sins  one  to  another, 
and  pray  one  for  another  that  ye  may  be  healed,'  and  in 
the  Didache  a  public  confession  of  sins  is  required  from 
those  who  are  about  to  communicate. 


CHAPTER  III 

CHURCH    AND    STATE    DOWN    TO    A.D.    112 

The  propagation  of  great  ideas,  which  alter  men's  con- 
ception of  human  life,  is  never  without  its  political  im- 
portance ;  and  Roman  politicians  might  have  had  to  deal 
with  Christianity,  even  if  it  had  been  only  a  new  way  of 
thinking.  But  it  was  always  something  more  than  this. 
Christians,  wherever  they  were,  formed  part  of  a  society  : 
primarily  of  a  local  society,  but  also,  and  not  less  essen- 
tially, of  a  far  larger  unity.  The  local  societies  lived  in 
constant  communication  with  one  another,  and  in  a 
certain  degree  of  isolation  from  other  people.  They 
held  beliefs  and  used  practices  which  were  not  known 
outside  the  brotherhood.  Now,  all  governments  regard 
secret  societies  with  a  certain  degree  of  suspicion,  unless 
their  secrecy  is  known  to  be  beneficent:  it  is  always 
possible  that  what  goes  on  undergi-ound,  as  it  were,  is 
dangerous  to  the  social  order  as  a  whole.  The  Roman 
government  was  always  suspicious  of  any  form  of  com- 
bination :  under  the  empire  no  collegium  could  be  formed 
without  the  consent  of  the  senate,  ratified  by  the 
emperor;  and  this  permission  was  not  always  easy  to 
obtain.  The  emperor  Trajan,  for  instance,  even  forbade 
the  formation  of  a  guild  of  150  firemen,  and  of  a  '  dining- 
club '  of  poor  people,  at  Nicomedia.  Perhaps,  then,  the 
corporate  character  of  Christianity  might  have  brought 
it  into  conflict  with  Roman  administration,  even  if  it 
had  been  a  mere  society  of  idealists.  But  the  actual 
hostility  which  came  to  exist  between  Church  and  empire, 
and  lasted  for  two  centuries  and  a  half,  grew  from  causes 
7uore  complex  than  the  Roman  law  against  associations : 


CHURCH    AND   STATE   TO   A.  D.    112      87 

it  was  maintained  as  a  part  of  imperial  policy,  and  kept 
active  by  popular  feeling'.  We  have  now  to  follow  the 
growth  of  this  policy,  and  account  for  the  general  ill-will 
which  welcomed  and  assisted  its  continuance. 

The  Church  tolerated  down  to  A.D.  64. — For  more  than 
thirty  years  the  existence  of  the  Church  as  a  separate 
body  was  ignored  by  government.     S.  Paul,  as  a  Christian 
traveller,  enjoyed   all  the  privilege  and  protection  of 
citizenship,  and  in  return  taught  his  fellow-Churchmen 
to  regard   the   empire    and    its    officials  as  beneficent 
powers  'ordained  by  God.'     The  issue  between  him  and 
the  Corinthian  Jews  was  treated  by  Gallio  at  Corinth 
as  a  technical    matter   of    Jewish    law,  and    therefore 
outside  his  province  as  a  magistrate.     At  Rome  itself, 
during  the  reign  of  Claudius,  a  measure  of  police  super- 
vision was  enacted  against  the  Jews,  a  measure  so  severe 
that  it  drove  many  of  them  from  the  city.      The  his- 
torian Suetonius,  in  describing  this  incident,  says  that 
it  was  due  to  continuous  riots  stirred  up  by  '^Chrestus.' 
It  is  quite  possible  that  he  has  slightly  misunderstood  his 
authority,  and  that  in  reality  these  riots  were  due  to  the 
opposition  which  Christian  teaching  met  with  among  the 
orthodox  Jews.     If  so,  we  have  here  another  instance  of 
the  fact  that  no  distinction  was  at  this  time  made  between 
Jew  and  Christian.      Both  were  tolerated  everywhere, 
unless  their  conduct  endangered  the  public  peace.     So 
long  as  this  state  of  things  continued,  there  was  no  per- 
secution.    The  Church  might  be  disliked  as  Jews  were 
disliked  everywhere,  and  individuals  might  suffer  incon- 
venience, but  to  the  official  mind  Christianity  was  neither 
a  crime  in  itself  nor  suspected  of  criminal  tendencies. 
Two    cases    may    be    quoted    in    this    context:    (1)    In 
the  year  a.d.  57  or  68,  Pomponia  Graecina,  wife  of  the 
Aulus  Plautius  who  had  enabled  Claudius  to  add  Britain 
to  the  empire  in  a.d.  43,  was  brought  before  a  tribunal 
of  her  own  family  on  a  charge  of  '  foreign  superstition.' 
The  tribunal  found  her  not  guilty,  but  the  remainder  of 
her  life,  says  Tacitus,  was  spent  in  unbroken  melancholy. 
The  conjecture  that  this  foreign  superstition  was  Chris- 
tianity has  a  good  deal  of  probability.     Trisfitia  might 
well  describe  the  severity  with  which  a  Christian  would 


38      CHURCH    HISTORY   TO    A.D,    325 

hold  aloof  from  the  observances  of  a  pagan  family  ;  and, 
indeed,  it  was  in  later  times  a  constant  charge  against 
the  new  religion  that  it  took  the  joy  out  of  life.  Now, 
in  the  oldest  part  of  the  catacomb  of  Callistus  at  Rome, 
a  Christian  sepulchral  inscription,  of  the  second  or  per- 
haps third  century,  has  been  discovered  bearing  the  name 
of  one  Pomponius  Graecinus,  while  other  members  of 
the  Pomponian  gens  are  buried  not  far  off.  Thus  the 
descendants  of  Pomponia  Grsecina  were  certainly  Chris- 
tians, and  the  fact  goes  strongly  to  confirm  the  inter- 
pretation of  Tacitus'  story  suggested  above.  If  these 
converging  indications  are  accepted,  then  the  acquittal 
of  this  lady  shows,  that  in  a.d.  57-58  it  was  no  crime  at 
Rome  to  be  a  Christian.  (2)  In  a.d.  59  or  60  S.  Paul 
was  brought  to  Rome,  and  some  two  years  later  came 
before  the  emperor  Nero.  Of  this  trial  we  know  nothing 
except  that  the  Apostle  had  to  go  through  it  unsupported 
by  friends.  But  the  result  is  known  :  he  was  ^  delivered 
out  of  the  mouth  of  the  lion,'  as  he  told  Timothy.  Now, 
the  point  on  which  the  appeal  to  Caesar  was  made  must 
have  been  this  :  was  S.  Paul's  conduct  at  Jerusalem 
riotous  and  treasonable  ?  If  it  had  already  become  a 
maxim  of  administration  that  all  Christians  were  ipso 
facto  criminals,  acquittal  would  have  been  impossible ; 
and  further,  if  the  emperor  had  taken  the  special  charac- 
teristics of  Christianity  into  account  while  deciding  S. 
Paul's  case,  his  action  in  acquitting  him  would  have 
formed  a  precedent  most  favourable  to  the  Church. 
Subsequent  events  make  it  clear  that  no  such  precedent 
was  formed,  and  that  no  question  of  S.  Paul's  Chris- 
tianity was  raised  at  that  time.  The  period  of  persecution 
had  not  yet  begun. 

Change  of  policy  under  Nero. — About  two  years  later, 
in  A.D.  64,  the  situation  was  very  different.  According 
to  Tacitus,  the  Christian  body  tad  become  universally 
unpopular,  and  was  believed  to  exist  for  criminal  pur- 
poses. When  the  great  fire  devastated  half  the  city, 
it  became  necessary  for  the  emperor,  who  found  him- 
self suspected  of  causing  the  disaster  for  his  own  ends, 
to  fix  the  blame  on  some  class  whom  the  people  would 
be  glad  to  see   extinguished,  and  the  Christians  were 


CHURCH    AND   STATE   TO   A.D.    112      89 

ready  to  his  hand.  Tacitus'  difficult  narrative  continues 
thus  :  '  First,  then,  some  were  hurried  to  trial,  who  con- 
fessed ;  then,  on  their  information,  a  vast  multitude  was 
sent  to  join  them — not  so  much  on  the  charge  of  arson 
as  on  the  ground  that  they  were  enemies  of  the  human 
race.  And  their  death  was  further  made  a  public  sport : 
some  were  dressed  up  in  the  skins  of  wild  beasts  and 
worried  to  death  by  dogs ;  some  were  crucified  and  set 
up  to  be  burnt  alive  as  an  illumination  when  night 
came  on.  Nero  had  allowed  his  garden  to  be  used  for 
this  spectacle,  and  gave  a  circus  performance  there,  now 
mingling  with  the  people  in  the  dress  of  a  charioteer, 
and  now  driving  a  chariot.  Hence,  although  these  people 
were  guilty  and  deserved  to  be  punished  with  the  utmost 
severity,  men  began  to  pity  them,  and  to  feel  that  they 
were  being  destroyed  rather  to  satiate  the  cruelty  of 
an  individual  than  to  promote  the  public  good.'  This  be- 
ginning of  persecution  had,  then,  no  specifically  religious 
cause.  The  populace  were  beside  themselves  with  the 
desire  to  be  avenged  on  the  authors  of  the  public  calamity, 
and  the  policy  of  the  emperor  was  to  treat  all  Christians 
as  incendiaries.  The  statement  that  some  'confessed' 
on  being  arrested  may  mean  either  that  they  confessed 
to  being  Christians,  or  that  under  torture  they  owned 
themselves  guilty  of  arson.  This  point  is,  however,  of 
small  importance ;  for  the  vast  multitude  who  suffered 
afterwards,  suffered  without  doubt  on  the  ground  that 
the  whole  Church  was  either  implicated  in  the  fire,  or 
was  a  society  as  hostile  to  civilisation  as  poisoners  or 
magicians  :  Christianity,  that  is,  became  a  crime  because 
it  was  believed  necessarily  to  involve  criminal  practices. 

The  barbarities  of  the  year  a.d.  64  came  soon  to  an 
end ;  but  they  left  behind  them  an  enduring  policy : 
the  Church  was  henceforth  proscribed. 

Before  the  death  of  Nero,  in  a.d.  68,  two  illustrious 
names  were  added  to  the  long  list  of  his  victims,  those 
of  S.  Paul  and  S.  Peter :  both  suffered,  according  to 
a  quite  trustworthy  tradition,  in  Rome.  They  were 
buried,  the  one  on  the  Ostian  Way,  the  other  in  the 
Vatican  ;  and  on  June  29th,  a.d.  258,  both  bodies  were 
removed  for  concealment  to  the  catacombs  of  S.  Sebastian 


40      CHURCH    HISTORY   TO   A.D.    325 

on  the  Via  Appia.  The  day  of  this  depositio  became 
permanently  appropriated  to  the  commemoration  of  the 
two  Apostles,  and  even  gave  rise  to  the  story,  which  has 
no  other  ground,  that  they  suffered  on  the  same  day. 

The  history  of  persecution  during  the  reigns  of  Ves- 
pasian and  Titus  (a.d.  69-81)  is  obscure.  Early  Christian 
writers  agree  to  single  out  Nero  and  Domitian  as  the  only 
two  persecuting  emperors  of  the  first  century :  Nero's 
successors  are  represented  as  having  been  comparatively 
favourable  to  the  Church.  There  are,  however,  reasons 
for  doubting  the  accuracy  of  this  picture.  The  govern- 
ment of  the  Roman  empire  was  never  an  arbitrary 
despotism  ;  it  did  not  make  and  unmake  laws  for  mere 
caprice.  Thus,  although  the  death  of  Nero  was  certainly 
followed  by  an  interval  of  peace,  yet  if  Christians  were 
recognised  as  a  criminal  class  in  a.d.  67j,  the  silence  of 
our  authorities  about  the  following  years  ought  not  to 
be  interpreted  as  proving  that  they  were  then  regarded 
as  harmless.  Further,  the  first  Epistle  of  S.  Peter,  which 
was  written,  according  to  the  safest  theory,^  towards  the 
end  of  the  reign  of  Nero,  warned  the  Asiatic  Christians, 
to  whom  it  was  sent,  that  they  are  to  expect  a  period  of 
severe  suffering.  They  were  told  to  expect  that  criminal 
charges  would  be  laid  against  them,  charges  which  they 
would  have  to  repel ;  but  they  were  also  likely  to  be 
accused  simply  of  being  Christians  :  of  this  they  were 
not  to  be  ashamed,  but  to  glorify  God  in  His  Name. 
Was  this  warning  a  false  alarm  ?  If  not — and  there  is 
no  positive  reason  for  thinking  that  it  was — it  is  a  fair 
inference  that  Vespasian  probably  continued,  in  some 
of  the  provinces  at  least,  the  policy  which  Nero  had  laid 
down. 

Domitian  and  his  motives  for  persecution. — On  the  other 
hand,  the  evil  pre-eminence  assigned  to  Domitian  (a.d. 
81-96)  can  be  fully  justified  by  trustworthy  evidence. 
It  is  true  that  we  have  no  account  of  this  persecution 
so  detailed  as  the  narratives  of  a  later  period  ;  but  such 

1  Prof.  Ramsay  [Church  in  the  Roman  Empire,  pp.  279  ff.) 
dates  it  as  late  as  a.d.  80,  on  the  ground  that  the  stage  of 
persecution  implied  in  1  S.  Pet.  iv.  12-17  cannot  have  been 
reached  as  early  as  a.d.  67. 


CHURCH   AND   STATE   TO   A.D.    112      41 

evidence  as  we  possess  goes  to  show  that  severe  measures 
were  adopted  in  many  parts  of  the  empire.  The  reign 
of  Domitian^  like  that  of  Tiberius,  began  well  and 
ended  in  swift  degeneration,  both  moral  and  political. 
A  strong  autocrat,  he  made  himself  master  of  the  senate, 
and  in  consequence  was  never  popular  with  the  Roman 
aristocracy.  A  zealous  conservative  in  dealing  with 
public  morals,  and  a  strong  upholder  of  the  imperial 
religion,  he  always  viewed  the  philosophical  tendencies 
of  the  time  with  keen  suspicion.  But  the  greater  part  of 
his  reign  was  free  from  the  conspicuous  tyranny  of  his 
last  three  years,  when  he  used  the  unstatesmanlike 
weapons  of  persecution  and  delation  against  the  men  and 
sects  from  whom  he  thought  himself  in  danger.  The 
chief  cause  of  this  change  was  the  fact  that  he  had  no 
children,  which  made  him  jealous  of  any  able  man 
who  might  aspire  to  succeed  him,  and  increasingly 
intolerant  of  opposition.  With  this  should  be  reckoned 
the  deep  financial  embarrassments  in  which  a  magnificent 
expenditure  on  building  had  involved  him.  In  the  year 
A.D.  93  began  a  series  of  judicial  murders  and  confisca- 
tions as  heartlessly  cruel  as  those  of  the  last  years  of 
Nero :  and  to  these  was  added  a  decree  of  the  senate 
banishing  all  *^  philosophers,  astrologers,  and  sooth- 
sayers '  from  Italy, 

Mutual  hostility  of  Churcli  and  State. — It  is  to  these 
years  that  the  tradition  which  places  Domitian  among 
the  persecutors  assigns  the  composition  of  the  Revela- 
tion; and,  indeed,  the  whole  attitude  of  that  book  towards 
the  empire  is  such  as  only  a  policy  of  ruthless  hostility 
could  provoke.  To  S.  Paul  and  S.  Peter,  the  oflScials  of 
the  empire  had  a  divine  commission  for  the  maintenance 
of  law ;  and  even  during  the  Neronian  persecutions, 
S.  Peter  copies  the  thought  and  language  of  the  Epistle 
to  the  Romans  in  exhorting  the  Church  to  loyalty  and 
good  citizenship.  But  to  S.  John,  the  empire  is  Babylon 
drunk  with  the  blood  of  the  saints  ;  and  the  souls  of  those 
who  have  died  for  the  testimony  of  Jesus  cry  out  against 
it  from  beneath  the  altar.  In  the  epistle  to  the  Church 
of  Pergamos  we  have  evidence  as  to  the  cause  of  this 
vehemence :    '  I  know  where  thou  dwellest,  where  the 


42      CHURCH    HISTORY   TO   A.D.    325 

throne  of  Satan  is.'  The  worship  of  the  emperors  was 
strongly  encouraged  by  Domitian^  who  claimed  for  him- 
self while  living  the  unprecedented  title  of  Lord  and 
God  ;  and  in  Asia  during  this  period^  the  chief  centre  of 
the  cult  was  the  temple  of  Rome  and  Augustus^  the 
'throne  of  Satan/  at  Pergamos.  To  take  part  in  this 
idolatry  was  a  civil  duty  of  the  first  importance  to  a 
Roman  citizen,  and  to  a  Christian  it  was  the  last  and 
worst  apostasy.  Antipas,  the  faithful  witness,  had 
already  paid  the  penalty  of  constancy  at  Pergamos 
itself:  S.  John  had  been  driven  from  Ephesus  to 
Patmos,  where  he  wrote  to  warn  the  churches  of 
Smyrna  and  Philadelphia  that  they  might  expect  similar 
oppression.  But,  indeed,  the  whole  Apocalypse  is  full  of 
the  conviction  that  the  empire  and  the  Church  have 
declared  irreconcilable  war  on  one  another.  There  is 
reason  for  believing  that  this  effort  of  Domitian  to 
enforce  the  worship  of  the  Augusti  on  the  Church  was 
not  without  some  success.  In  the  year  a.d.  112,  the 
Roman  governor  of  Bithynia,  Pliny  the  younger,  writing 
to  Trajan  for  advice  ^  in  dealing  with  Christians,  speaks 
of  some  Bithynians  accused  of  belonging  to  the  Church 
who  admitted  that  they  had  once  been  Christians,  but 
affirmed  that  they  had  ceased  to  be  so  twenty  years 
before :  and  these  were  doubtless  the  apostates  ot 
Domitian's  time.  There  is  evidence,  then,  that  the  years 
A.D.  93-96  were  years  of  severe  trial  for  the  Church  in 
various  parts  of  Asia  ;  but  there  is  also  proof  that  Rome 
also  had  its  martyrs  at  this  time.  The  Roman  bishop, 
Clement,  began  his  letter  to  the  Corinthians  (a.d.  96 
or  97)  with  a  reference  to  the  *^  sudden  and  repeated 
calamities  and  disasters'  which  had  just  fallen  upon  the 
Christians  of  Rome :  and  this  general  reference  can  be 
confirmed  by  particular  evidence. 

Roman  martyrs. — In  a.d.  95  Flavius  Clemens,  one  of  the 
consuls,  whose  two  sons  Domitian  had  adopted,  was  put 
to  death  on  a  charge  of  'atheism':  his  wife  DomitiUa, 
Domitian's  niece,  was  banished,  and  many  others  sufi'ered 
death   or  confiscation  for   'adopting   Jewish   customs.' 

1  See  below,  p.  45. 


CHURCH   AND   STATE   TO   A.D.    112      43 

Acilius  Glabrio,  consul  in  a.d.  91,  was  one  of  the  victims 
of  this  attack.  Now,  the  mention  of  atheism  and  Jewish 
customs  together  makes  it  fairly  clear  that  all  these 
persons  were  Christians ;  for  the  popular  mind  had  not 
wholly  disconnected  Christianity  from  Judaism,  and 
indeed  could  not  rightly  do  so,  while  by  'atheism'  is 
meant  some  open  act  of  hostility  to  established  religion, 
and  not  a  disbelief  in  the  existence  of  gods.  When  we 
learn  further  that  Flavius  Clemens  was  accused  of  'con- 
temptible inactivity,'  the  probability  of  the  argument  is 
heightened,  for  rigid  abstention  from  pagan  observances 
would  be  just  the  point  in  which  a  Christian  magistrate 
would  have  to  make  himself  conspicuous.  At  this  point, 
archaeological  discovery  makes  an  even  greater  degree 
of  certainty  attainable  than  was  the  case  with  the  trial 
of  Pomponia  Graecina.  The  'cemetery  of  Domitilla'  is 
one  of  the  oldest  Christian  burial-places  in  Rome :  the 
catacomb  was  dug  out  on  ground  granted  for  the  purpose 
by  Flavia  Domitilla:  the  tomb  of  Domitilla's  nurse  is 
there,  and  other  members  or  retainers  of  the  Flavian 
family  were  buried  in  the  same  place.  It  may  be  added, 
that  in  the  'cemetery  of  Priscilla'  there  are  inscriptions 
which  prove  that  at  least  some  members  of  the  family  of 
Acilius  Glabrio  also  belonged  to  the  Church. 

In  the  year  a.d.  06  Domitian  was  murdered.  A  passage 
in  the  Apologeticus  of  Tertullian  asserts  that  before  his 
death  he  relented,  and  restored  those  whom  he  had  sent 
into  exile.  There  is  little  doubt  that  this  is  a  mistake  : 
no  improvement  was  seen  either  in  administrative  aflPairs 
in  general  or  in  the  condition  of  the  persecuted  Chris- 
tians until  the  reign  of  Nerva.  The  first  business  of  the 
new  emperor  was  to  pacify  Rome  and  to  do  away  with 
the  crowd  of  informers  who  had  been  allowed  to  destroy 
the  security  of  social  life.  In  the  happy  results  of  this 
reaction  against  the  excesses  of  Domitian,  the  Christians 
had  some  share :  they  were  left  in  peace  so  long  as  the 
hated  memory  of  Domitian  deterred  men  from  any  policy 
which  might  seem  to  reproduce  the  evils  of  his  reign. 
Thus  the  epistle  of  Clement  of  Rome  to  the  Corinthians, 
written  at  this  time,  speaks  of  the  Church's  sufferings 
rather   in   a  tone  of  reminiscence:    and   S.   John  was 


44      CHURCH    HISTORY   TO    A.D.    325 

enabled  to  return  from  his  exile  in  Patmos^  and  finished 
his  long  life  in  Ephesus. 

Policy  of  Trajan. — Nerva  reigned  only  two  j^ears,  and 
was  succeeded  in  a.  d.  98  by  a  great  administrative  genius, 
the  emperor  Trajan.  History  supplies  us  with  only  two 
pieces  of  important  evidence  as  to  the  position  of  Chris- 
tians during  the  nineteen  years  of  this  reign. 

1.  The  letters  of  Ignatius. — About  a.d.  110  the  bishop 
of  Antioch  in  Syria,  Ignatius,  whose  Christian  name  was 
Theophorus,  was  arrested  on  the  charge  of  being  a  Chris- 
tian, and  was  sent  from  Antioch  to  Rome  to  suffer  in  the 
amphitheatre.  On  this  journey  he  passed  through  Phila- 
delphia and  stayed  at  Smyrna :  here  he  was  received  by 
Polycarp,  the  bishop,  with  the  rest  of  the  Church  ;  and  as 
the  news  of  his  arrival  spread  rapidly  over  the  Christian 
communities  of  the  neighbourhood,  deputed  messengers 
came  to  visit  him  from  Tralles,  Magnesia,  and  Ephesus. 
Each  of  these  took  back  a  letter  with  him  to  the  Church 
which  had  sent  him ;  and  when  the  old  bishop  had  passed 
on  to  Troas,  he  sent  back  letters  to  Philadelphia,  to  the 
Church  of  Smyrna,  and  to  Polycarp.  He  was  then  taken 
on  towards  Rome,  whither  he  had  already  sent  a  letter 
begging  the  Church  there  to  do  nothing  which  might  rob 
him  of  the  glory  of  martyrdom. 

These  letters  are  of  special  importance  for  the  history 
of  the  ministry.  They  show  that  in  Asia  the  three  orders 
of  bishop,  presbyter,  and  deacon  were  now  firmly  estab- 
lished, and  that  the  administration  and  worship  of  each 
Church  depended  on  the  authority  of  a  single  officer  to 
wliom  the  presbyters  were  joined  as  assessors.  They  also 
throw  some  light  on  the  history  of  persecution.  We 
notice  first  the  rapid  and  unhindered  communication 
which  was  allowed  to  link  the  local  Churches  together. 
Ignatius'  messengers  and  the  Churches'  deputies  passed 
unchallenged,  the  bishop's  friends  were  allowed  free 
access  to  the  prisoner.  When  the  satirist  Lucian  relates 
how  a  religious  impostor,  Peregrinus,  turned  Christian 
for  a  time,  he  adopts  almost  the  very  language  of  the 
Ignatian  letters  to  describe  the  zeal  with  which  distant 
Churches  hastened  to  pay  honour  to  his  hero  when 
imprisoned  for  the  faith  he  chose  to  profess. 


CHURCH    AND   STATE   TO   A.D.    112      45 

Again,  the  passion  of  Ignatius  for  a  martyr's  death 
is  expressed  in  language  which  shows  how  natural  and 
necessary  the  conflict  between  Church  and  State  already 
seemed :  ^  Christianity  is  a  thing  of  might  whensoever 
it  is  hated  by  the  world/  and  a  disciple  is  not  fully  tested 
until  he  has  fought  the  supreme  fight  of  martyrdom. 
Direct  references  to  the  persecution  are  not  frequent 
in  Ignatius ;  but  he  mentions  others  who  have  gone 
before  him  on  the  same  journey  'to  the  glory  of  God,' 
and  speaks  of  Ephesus  and  Rome  as  pre-eminent  in 
steadfastness :  Ephesus  is  the  '  high  road  of  those  who 
are  on  their  way  to  die  unto  God/  and  Rome  is  a  Church 
that  can  teach  because  it  has  sufl'ered. 

2.  The  correspondence  of  Pliny  with  Trajan. — In  the 
year  a.d.  112  Plinius  Secundus  was  in  special  charge  of 
Bithynia.  In  the  course  of  official  business,  he  had 
occasion  to  refer  many  points  of  detail  to  the  emperor  : 
a  collection  of  his  letters  has  preserved  for  us  both  Pliny's 
problems  and  the  answers  sent  by  Trajan.  Among  these 
questions  of  police,  drainage,  water-supply,  and  the 
like,  are  found  a  letter  and  a  rescript  which  deal  with 
che  imperial  policy  in  regard  to  the  Christians. 

The  Christians  of  Bithynia  had  become  numerous  : 
they  were  to  be  found  not  only  in  the  cities,  but  also  in 
the  country  districts.  Their  strength  was  so  considerable 
that  trade  in  fodder  for  sacrificial  victims  had  seriously 
sufl'ered.  Pliny  knew,  of  course,  that  there  was  a  rule 
for  dealing  with  these  people,  but  he  had  never  been 
present  at  any  of  their  trials.  When  Christians  were 
brought  before  him,  he  attempted  to  induce  them  to 
recant,  and  those  who  repeatedly  refused  were  put  to 
death.  Owing  to  anonymous  information,  the  number 
of  cases  became  serious  ;  two  tests  were  proposed  to  each 
prisoner :  he  was  asked  to  ofl^er  incense  to  the  emperor's 
statue  and  to  curse  Christ.  Pliny  became  uneasy  as  the 
seriousness  of  the  business  was  made  apparent ;  the  more 
so,  because,  even  after  torturing  two  deaconesses,  he 
could  find  nothing  worse  in  Christianity  than  a  '  wicked 
superstition'  conjoined  with  practices  of  an  innocent 
character.  He  therefore  sent  the  matter  up  to  the 
emperor,    whose    brief  reply  laid   down    the    following 


46       CHURCH    HISTORY   TO   A.D.    326 

principles :  (1)  a  hard  and  fast  policy  in  this  matter  is 
impossible;  (2)  Christians^  if  convicted^  must  be  punished; 
(3)  if  they  recant,  and  ^worship  our  gods/  their  past 
actions  may  be  ignored.  On  the  other  hand,  (4)  they 
are  not  to  be  sought  out ;  and  (5)  anonymous  accusations 
are  to  be  disregarded. 

This  rescript  is  regarded  by  early  Christian  authorities 
as  a  substantial  gain  to  the  Church  :  they  remember 
Trajan  as  one  who  restored  its  security  by  rescuing  it 
from  the  previous  policy  of  systematic  extermination. 
The  instructions  given  to  Pliny  were  probably  similar 
to  those  sent  to  other  governors ;  and  if  the  effect  of  the 
general  order  had  been  to  continue  a  policy  as  severe  as 
that  of  Domitian^  it  is  easy  to  see  that  Trajan  would  have 
been  remembered  along  with  Domitian  and  Nero  as  a 
chief  enemy  of  the  Church.  The  experience  of  Christians 
decided  otherwise,  and  Trajan  was  thought  of  with  grati- 
tude as  the  initiator  of  a  milder  regime. 


CHAPTER  IV 

JEWISH    CHRISTIANITY 

Jewish  Christianity. — This  expres^on,  during  the  first  few 
years  of  the  Church's  existence^  would  have  been  almost 
meaningless.  There  was  then  no  Christianity  that  was 
not  Jewish.  Two  hundred  years  later  there  was  scarcely 
anything  left  that  answered  to  the  name.  The  vast 
majority  of  converts  came  then  from  the  Gentile  world, 
and  were  incorporated  into  a  society  fi-om  which  Jewish 
observances,  at  least,  had  been  almost  wholly  obliterated. 
We  have  now  to  give  an  outline  of  the  way  in  which  this 
great  change  was  brought  about. 

The  dispersion  of  the  Apostles,  and,  later,  the 
martyrdom  of  S.  James  (62),  must  have  left  compara- 
tively few  'liberal'  Christians  in  Jerusalem.  That 
Church  was  composed  in  the  main  of  people  to  whom 
S.  Paul's  wide  conception  of  Christian  liberty  in  rela- 
tion to  the  Law  was  very  unwelcome.  The  decision  of 
the  'Council  of  Jerusalem,'  co-operating  with  other 
circumstances,  had  made  it  impossible  for  their  views  to 
be  imposed  on  communities  of  Gentile  Christians ;  but  it 
did  not  prevent  the  survival,  in  Palestine  at  least,  and 
probably  in  many  of  the  '  mixed '  churches  elsewhere,  of 
the  conviction  that  a  Jew  could  never  be  set  free  from 
his  allegiance  to  the  Jewish  Law.  Hence,  while  the 
active  conflicts  reflected  in  the  Epistles  to  the  Galatians 
and  Romans  were  never  renewed,  we  often  hear  of  efi'orts 
to  import  isolated  points  of  Jewish  observance,  doctrine, 
and  speculation  into  the  Church.^     Hence  also,  there 

1  Of.  especially  the  Epistle  to  the  Colossians  and  the  Epistles 
to  Timothy  and  Titus. 

47 


48       CHURCH    HISTORY   TO    A.  D.    325 

lived  ou  in  the  church  of  Jerusalem  and  its  descendants 
a  type  of  Christianity  which  stood  completely  aloof  from 
the  life  and  development  of  the  Gentile  churches.  For  a 
few  years  after  S.  James's  death_,  his  people  (governed, 
we  are  told,  by  Symeon,  the  son  of  Clopas)  were  able  to 
maintain  without  disturbance  the  double  life  of  Christian 
Judaism,  keeping  the  worship  of  the  Temple  side  by  side 
with  the  ^  gathering  together '  of  the  Christian  society. 
But  in  QQ  a  desperate  effort  was  made  by  Jewish  patriots 
and  fanatics  to  shake  off  the  Roman  yoke.  The  Roman 
garrison  at  Jerusalem  was  massacred,  the  Temple  seized, 
the  city  prepared  for  a  siege.  In  obedience  to  our  Lord's 
command  and  warning,  the  Christian  body  fled  from  the 
place.  Their  chief  place  of  refuge  lay  some  distance  to 
the  north,  in  the  Jordan  valley,  in  a  town  of  the 
Decapolis  which  its  Macedonian  founders  had  named 
after  their  own  capital,  Pella.  By  their  flight  they  of 
course  dissociated  themselves  from  the  nationalism  of 
the  revolters ;  and  they  must  have  felt  that  their  share 
in  the  common  hopes  of  their  race  was  small.  But  the 
destruction  of  the  Temple  (a.d.  70)  robbed  them,  as  it 
robbed  the  whole  nation,  of  only  a  part  of  their  religious 
inheritance.  Just  as  the  school  of  Rabbis  which  gathered 
at  Jamnia,  near  Joppa,  was  able  to  console  itself  with  a 
new  devotion  to  the  interpretation  of  the  Law,  so  also  the 
Christians  of  Pella  could  still  practise  the  life  of  legal 
observance.  Very  little  can  be  discovered  as  to  the  details 
of  their  history  during  the  rest  of  the  century.  In  two 
instances  the  anxiety  of  the  Roman  Government  to  pre- 
vent a  recurrence  of  the  rebellion  is  said  to  have  affected 
the  Church.  Search  was  ordered  by  Domitian  for  de- 
scendants of  David,  and  two  grandsons  of  Jude,  the 
brother  of  the  Lord,  were  brought  before  him.  They 
were  poor  and  simple  farmers,  whom  no  one  could 
suspect  of  a  desire  to  claim  a  restoration  of  the  Davidic 
line ;  and  on  their  confession  that  the  kingdom  of  their 
aspirations  was  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven,  they  were 
allowed  to  return  unmolested  to  their  farm.  It  is  said, 
also,  that  in  the  reign  of  Trajan  the  aged  bishop  Symeon 
was  betrayed  by  Jewish  sectaries  to  the  Government  as  a 
descendant  of  David,  and  put  to  death.     If  the  story  is 


JEWISH    CHRISTIANITY  49 

true,  it  must  be  explained  by  supposing  that  widespread 
conspiracies  against  Roman  rule  had  by  this  time  pro- 
voked repressive  measures. 

Jewisli  revolts  against  Rome. — Toward  the  end  of 
Trajan's  reign  (in  115-6),  the  Jews  of  the  dispersion 
contrived  the  first  of  two  schemes  which  brought  the 
most  serious  consequences  both  upon  themselves  and 
on  the  Christians  of  Palestine.  During  the  absence 
of  the  emperor  on  the  Parthian  frontier,  the  great 
Jewish  colonies  of  Egypt,  Cyrene,  and  Cyprus  rose  in 
rebellion.  Their  example  was  quickly  followed  by  those 
of  Mesopotamia.  In  all  those  places  great  cruelty  was 
used  toward  the  other  inhabitants.  The  matter  was 
taken  seriously,  as  it  deserved  :  the  revolts  were  sup- 
pressed with  unsparing  severity,  and  many  thousands  of 
Jews  are  said  to  have  perished.  The  refusal  of  the 
Christian  Jews  to  take  part  in  these  insurrections  must 
have  embittered  their  relations  with  the  orthodox.  The 
freedom  with  which  they  had  once  shared  in  the  life  of 
the  local  synagogues  was  by  this  time  greatly  curtailed  : 
they  began  to  be  known  as  Minim,  or  heretics,  they  were 
accused  of  using  magic  for  purposes  of  healing,  and 
curses  against  Christ  were  introduced  into  the  prayers. 

The  disturbances  of  116  resulted  six  years  later  in  a 
precautionary  measure,  which  in  the  end  provoked  the 
nationalist  spirit  to  a  desperate  and  final  effort.  Hadrian 
resolved  in  122  to  rebuild  Jerusalem  as  a  settlement  of 
Roman  veterans  under  the  name  Aelia  Capitolina.  The 
site  of  the  Temple  was  desecrated  by  temples  of  Venus  and 
Jupiter  Capitolinus.  How  long  it  took  to  carry  out  this 
plan  we  do  not  know ;  but  in  131  the  nationalist  zeal  for 
the  recovery  of  the  Holy  City  led  to  a  general  rising  of 
the  Jews  of  Palestine.  The  leader  in  this  attempt  was 
one  Bar-Cochba,  '  the  son  of  a  star,'  a  man  well  equipped 
for  the  part  of  a  popular  hero,  who  claimed  that  in  him 
the  prophecy  '^  there  shall  come  a  star  out  of  Jacob '  was 
fulfilled.  This  pretension  was  backed  by  the  leading 
Jewish  teacher  of  the  time,  the  Rabbi  Akiba,  a  subtle 
expounder  of  the  minutest  details  of  the  Law^  who  had 
travelled  east  and  west  as  a  missionary  in  the  cause  of 
Jewish  patriotism.     With  this  support  Bar-Cochba  could 


50      CHURCH    HISTORY   TO    A.D.    325 

command  both  men  and  money  in  plenty.  The  Roman 
coinage  current  in  Palestine  was  restamped^  dated  by 
the  '^  years  of  the  liberation  of  Jerusalem/  and  engraved 
with  patriotic  symbols.  It  was  not  until  135  that  the 
Romans  under  Julius  Severus^  who  had  been  summoned 
from  Britain  to  take  over  the  general  command  of  the 
war,  succeeded  in  reducing  the  strength  of  the  insurgents 
to  a  single  position^  the  fortified  town  of  Bether^  seven 
miles  south-west  of  Jerusalem.  Here,  after  a  prolonged 
and  desperate  resistance,  the  revolt  came  to  its  inevitable 
end.  The  Jewish  losses  were  enormous :  the  whole 
country  was  devastated,  and  great  numbers  of  men, 
women,  and  children  sold  into  slavery.  After  the  revolt 
of  115,  the  Jews  had  been  expelled  from  Cyprus  and  for- 
bidden to  return  ;  it  is  said  that  even  when  driven  on  the 
coast  by  shipwreck  many  had  been  murdered  by  the 
Gentile  inhabitants.  A  similar  measure  now  excluded 
them  from  the  Holy  City,  and  the  new  Roman  town  of 
Aelia  Capitolina  had  not  one  inhabitant  whose  faith  had 
been  centred  in  Jerusalem. 

The  results  of  this  catastrophe  were  profound  for 
Judaism  and  Christianity  alike.  Jewish  nationalism  had 
made  its  last  effort,  and  failed.  The  restoration  of  Israel 
to  political  independence  was  now  impossible,  and  from 
that  time  until  now  the  Jews  haA^e  acquiesced  in  the 
strange  destiny  which  has.  made  and  kept  them  a  '  Dis- 
persion.' But  although  the  visible  centre  of  their  unity 
was  removed,  there  was  and  still  is  another  bond  which 
has  triumphed  over  all  the  forces  of  dissipation — the 
bond  of  the  Law.  From  the  ruin  of  the  Temple  and  City 
in  A.D.  70  began  the  ascendency  of  the  great  teachers 
who  interpreted  the  Torah  by  word  of  mouth  to  the 
scholars  of  the  Rabbinical  schools  ;  from  the  disasters  of 
A.D.  135  began  a  great  literary  work  in  which  every 
detail  of  the  Law  was  subjected  to  minute  and  casuistical 
discussion. 

Decline  of  Jewish  Christianity, — Tlie  history  of  Pales- 
tinian Christianity  during  the  second  and  third  centuries 
is  very  obscure.  The  great  movements  and  the  great 
men  of  the  Church  belong  to  other  regions.  The 
•developments  of  thought  which  have  had  a  permanent 


JEWISH    CHRISTIANITY  61 

effect  on  our  religion  came  not  from  Palestine,  but 
from  great  centres  of  Greek  life,  such  as  Alexandrif*  or 
Antioch.  The  strip  of  country  which  lay  between  these 
two  cities  produced  scarcely  a  single  man  whom  the 
Church  outside  it  has  remembered.  There  are,  how- 
ever, records  which  show  that  in  these  isolated  districts 
Jewish  Christianity  had  a  considerable  and  varied 
history.  The  Church  of  Jerusalem,  driven  in  a.d.  66 
into  the  Decapolis,  never  returned  to  its  home,  but 
became  a  centre  of  Christian  teaching,  especially  for 
the  districts  that  lay  east  of  Jordan.  With  this  exiled 
community  the  Gentile  Church  of  Aelia  Capitolina  had 
no  continuous  connection.  In  the  fourth  century,  in- 
deed, when  the  name  Jerusalem  had  recovered  its  proper 
meaning,  the  Christians  of  the  place  claimed  continuity 
through  a  series  of  bishops  with  the  earliest  of  all  the 
Churches,  and  a  special  precedence  was  granted  to  their 
bishop  in  virtue  of  the  sacred  associations  of  his  ^parish.' 
But  the  claim  was  really  without  foundation.  Aelia  in 
the  second  century  was  a  purely  Gentile  Church,  and 
stood  quite  apart  from  the  Jewish  types  of  Christianity 
which  lived  on  in  other  parts  of  Palestine.  A  consider- 
able part  of  the  old  Church  of  Jerusalem  had,  as  we 
have  seen,  remained  Judaistic  in  the  strict  sense  :  it  had 
resented  the  liberalism  of  S.  Paul,  who  seemed  to  allow 
to  Jew  and  Gentile  a  freedom  which  the  Gentile  ought 
not  to  demand  and  the  true  Hebrew  could  not  accept. 
Now,  even  though  the  orthodoxy  of  the  synagogues  had 
finally  repudiated  Jesus  Christ,  a  considerable  proportion 
of  the  Palestinian  Christians  still  tried  to  maintain  the 
laws  and  usages  of  the  religion  by  which  they  had  been 
abjured.  This  obstinate  legalism  was  quite  impotent  to 
conciliate  the  non-Christian  Jews,  and  it  formed  a  barrier 
between  the  Jewish  churches  and  the  communities  of 
the  larger  Christian  world.  That  isolation  had  a  sinister 
influence  on  many  of  the  Churches  of  Palestine. 
Although  there  was  a  remnant  which  held  to  the  teach- 
ing of  the  New  Testament  in  all  essential  points,  a  large 
number  of  converts  lost  in  one  way  or  another  the  true 
*  proportion  of  the  faith.' 
Pharisaic  Ebionism. — Many  shades  of  theological  c  pinion 


52       CHURCH    HISTORY    TO    A.D.    325 

among  Judaistic  Christians  bore  the  common  name 
Ehionite.  This  adjective  is  not  derived  (as  in  the  third 
century  some  writers  already  wished  to  derive  it)  from 
that  of  a  teacher  called  Ebion,  it  simply  represents  a 
Hebrew  word  meaning  poor,  and  in  origin  it  was  doubtless 
a  title  assumed  by  Christians  from  humility.  But 
Ebionism  became  known  not  as  a  way  of  life^  but  as  a 
doctrine.  The  pure  or  Pharisaic  Ebionites  held  firmly  to 
the  old  legal  rites,  to  circumcision  and  the  Sabbath_,  and 
their  theology  was  equally  Jewish.  They  believed  in  one 
God,  and  accepted  Jesus  Christ  as  the  Messiah  ;  but  as 
they  rejected  the  practical  liberalism  of  S.  Paul,  so  also 
they  denied  the  creed  on  which  it  rested.  They  chose  to 
think  of  Jesus  Christ  as  a  man  specially  endowed  with 
supernatural  gifts,  a  prophet  more  wonderful  than  the 
prophets,  but  differing  from  them  only  in  degree.  They 
had  therefore  no  sympathy  with  those  Christian  books 
which  spoke  of  Him  as  the  Word  of  God  made  man,  or 
as  One  ^Vho,  being  in  the  form  of  God,  humbled  Him- 
self and  took  the  form  of  a  servant;  they  rejected  all 
the  writings  of  S.  Paul,  and  only  used  a  Hebrew  gospel 
which  bore  some  resemblance  to  the  Gospel  according  to  S. 
Matthew.  These  '  Pharisaic '  Ebionites  were  the  natural 
heirs  of  S.  Paul's  earliest  opponents,  and  their  teaching 
was  the  natural  outcome  of  the  effort  to  compromise 
between  the  old  covenant  and  the  new. 

Essene  Ebionism. — Palestine  produced  another  type  of 
Ebionism,  a  doctrine  far  less  simple.  Pharisaic  Ebionism 
was  in  fact  not  so  much  a  theology  as  a  refusal  of 
theology.  When  Judaising  Christians  did  set  them- 
selves to  work  out  a  religious  philosophy,  they  found  ready 
to  their  hand  a  Jewish  philosophy  with  which  it  seemed 
easy  to  amalgamate  their  Christian  beliefs.  Reference 
has  already  been  made  (p.  12)  to  those  ascetic  com- 
munities of  Jews  called  Essene,  who  rejected  the  idea 
of  sacrifice,  viewed  the  world  of  matter  as  essentially 
evil,  and  framed  a  complex  doctrine  of  creating  angels 
in  order  to  relieve  the  supreme  God  from  responsibility 
for  its  existence.  Even  in  the  apostolic  age  some 
efforts  were  made  to  bring  these  ideas  within  the  circle 
»f  Christian   thought ;   and   iu   the   second   century,   it 


JEWISH    CHRISTIANITY  5£ 

was  the  fate  of  many  Ebionite  Christians  to  exchange 
their  simple  Judaistic  creed  for  a  religion  in  which 
Essenism  and  Christianity  were  strangely  blended. 
About  the  year  220;,  one  Alcibiades  of  Apamea  travelled 
to  Rome  in  order  to  advocate  this  doctrine.  He  brought 
with  him  a  book  which  Essene  Ebionites  appear  to  have 
received  as  a  revelation — the  ^book  of  Elchasai.'  This 
book  professed  to  date  from  the  third  year  of  Trajan 
(a.d.  100).  Its  practical  purpose  was  to  teach  a  repetition 
of  baptism  as  a  means  of  purification  from  sin  ;  the  sinner 
was  to  dip  himself  into  water  '  in  the  name  of  the  mighty 
and  most  high  God/  with  an  invocation  to  the  '^  seven 
witnesses'  (sky,  water,  the  holy  spirits,  the  angels  of 
prayer,  oil,  salt,  and  earth)  and  with  a  promise  of  amend- 
ment. This  baptism  not  only  procured  remission  of  sins, 
but  had  a  magical  efficacy  against  disease.  With  this 
fantastic  doctrine  and  certain  astrological  superstitions 
which  accompanied  it,  were  combined  the  Essene  aversion 
to  the  eating  of  flesh  and  a  form  of  the  Ebionite  view  of 
Christ  the  Messiah.  Christ,  this  book  taught,  was  an 
angel  born  of  common  human  parents  ;  but  His  birth  in 
Judaea  was  neither  the  first  nor  the  last  of  his  appear- 
ances :  He  had  appeared,  for  instance,  in  Adam  and  in 
Moses;  He  was,  however,  only  a  prophet,  and  His 
coming  did  not  abrogate  any  part  of  the  Law.  Circum- 
cision was  therefore  still  obligatory,  and  the  doctrine  of 
S.  Paul  must  be  renounced.  This  revelation  claimed  to 
represent  a  special  communication  given  by  Christ  Him- 
self, Who  had  appeared  to  Elchasai  as  an  angel  ninety- 
six  miles  high,  accompanied  by  a  female  angel  (the  Holy 
Spirit)  of  similar  dimensions. 

The  Clementine  Romances. — Such  grotesque  fantasies 
found  little  acceptance  in  the  West,  but  the  popularity 
which  .the  theology  and  morality  underlying  them  gained 
in  Palestine  is  attested  by  the  recurrence  of  many 
similar  features  in  the  literature  of  the  Clementine 
romance.  The  Clementine  Recognitions  and  Homilies 
form  two  versions  of  an  Ebionite  work  or  compilation 
purporting  to  contain  (1)  the  adventures  of  the  Clement 
who  was  bishop  of  Rome  at  the  end  of  the  first 
century,    and    (2)  the   preaching    of  S.    Peter   and   his 


54      CHURCH    HISTORY    TO   A.D.    325 

3ontroversies  with  Simon  Magus.  The  story  of  the 
Recognitions  recounts  how  Clement's  mother,  twin 
brothers,  and  father  had  lost  all  trace  of  each  other 
through  domestic  misfortunes,  and  by  a  series  of  strange 
coincidences  were  brought  together  again  and  finally 
united  in  the  Christian  faith.  The  discourses  which  this 
compilation  includes  are  less  innocent.  In  these,  along 
with  much  that  is  Christian  in  the  common  sense,  many 
of  the  elements  of  Essene  Ebionism  are  to  be  found. 
Many  critics  have  held  that  the  '  Simon  Magus '  whom 
S.  Peter  overthrows  in  argument  is  but  a  thinly  veiled 
portrait  of  S.  Paul ;  and  this  assumption  is  suggested, 
though  not  justified,  by  the  evident  animus  against 
Pauline  doctrine  which  the  Clementines  display.  In  one 
passage,  indeed,  Simon  Magus  does  adopt  toward  S.  Peter 
language  directly  derived  from  the  controversy  between 
S.  Peter  and  S.  Paul,  as  described  in  Galatians  ii.  11; 
and  the  preface  to  the  Homilies  speaks  of  the  ^lawless 
and  foolish  doctrine  that  the  obligations  of  the  Mosaic 
Law  are  not  perpetual,'  and  of  the  '^ enemy'  who  had 
even  represented  S.  Peter  as  adopting  this  error. 

While  the  tone  of  the  Recognitions,  though  markedly 
Ebionite,  is  that  of  a  book  from  which  many  heretical 
elements  have  been  removed,  the  Homilies  present  many 
coincidences  with  what  is  known  of  the  book  of  Elchasai : 
the  doctrine  of  successive  incarnations,  the  rejection  of 
sacrifice,  the  false  asceticism,  the  fantastic  doctrine  of 
angels,  and  the  invocation  of  the  '  seven  witnesses '  all 
recur  in  them ;  it  is  plain,  in  fact,  that  the  works  from 
which  they  and  the  Recognitions  are  derived  were  part 
of  the  ordinary  literature  of  the  Essene  Ebionites  of 
Palestine  in  the  second  century. 

This  perverted  and  mutilated  Christianity  lived  on, 
especially  in  the  districts  east  of  the  Jordan,  long  after 
the  conflict  between  Catholicism  and  Judaism  had  passed 
away.  It  lingered  as  late  as  a.d.  600,  when  Mohammed 
incorporated  it  into  his  new  religion. 

Orthodox  Jemsh  Christians. — But  the  tendencies  which 
produced  Pharisaic  and  Essene  Ebionism  were  not  the 
only  forces  at  work  in  the  early  Christianity  of  Palestine. 
Justin    Martyr,    writing   about   a.d.    150,    distinguishes 


JEWISH   CHRISTIANITY  65 

three  types  of  Judaistic  Christians  :  (1)  those  Jews  who 
keep  the  Law  themselves^  and  also  desire  to  enforce  it 
on  others ;  (2)  those  who  keep  the  Law  themselves,  and 
yet  do  not  attempt  to  impose  on  others  the  require- 
ments of  circumcision  and  Sabbath  observance  ;  (8)  men 
of  Gentile  birth  who  have  adopted  and  wish  to  enforce 
a  rigorously  Judaic  life.  There  is  reason  to  think  that 
at  any  rate  a  minority  of  Palestinian  Christians  retained 
both  the  purity  of  the  Christian  creed  and  the  com- 
parative liberalism  of  Justin's  second  class.  Obscure  as 
this  orthodox  minority  was,  it  produced  in  the  second 
century  two  writers,  Aristo  of  Pella  and  Hegesippus, 
from  whom  important  evidence  can  be  drawn  as  to  the 
type  of  Christianity  taught  in  the  Churches  from  which 
they  came.  Aristo  composed  a  dialogue  on  the  witness 
of  prophecy  to  Jesus  Christ,  which  was  orthodox  enough 
to  earn  the  approval  of  Origen.  Of  Hegesippus  more  is 
known.  He  was  a  Christian  of  Jewish  origin,  who  wrote 
and  travelled  during  the  reigns  of  Antoninus  Pius, 
Marcus  Aurelius,  and  Commodus.  He  was  the  author 
of  a  treatise  in  five  books  which  dealt  with  such  topics  as 
Paganism,  heresy,  Jewish  Christianity,  Christian  litera- 
ture, and  the  unity  of  Church  doctrine  ;  many  fragments 
of  these  survive  in  the  quotations  of  Eusebius,  who  drew 
much  of  his  information  about  early  Palestinian  Church 
history  and  chronology  from  this  source.  Hegesippus 
made  a  journey  about  a.d.  150  from  Palestine  to  Corinth 
and  Rome.  At  Rome  he  drew  up  a  list  of  Roman 
bishops,  in  order  to  show  that  there,  as  at  Corinth,  the 
continuity  of  the  Church  was  a  guarantee  of  its  fidelity 
to  apostolic  orthodoxy.  ^In  each  succession,  and  in 
every  city,  the  doctrine  is  in  accordance  with  that  which 
the  Law  and  the  prophets  and  the  Lord  proclaim.'  The 
evidence  of  this  writer,  then,  leaves  no  room  for  doubt 
that  the  Palestinian  Church  from  which  he  came  was  in 
all  essentials  Catholic.  And  although  Ebionism  came 
to  predominate  among  the  small  and  scattered  com- 
munities of  Hebrew  Christians,  yet  even  in  the  fourth 
century  there  remained  a  remnant  which  retained  both 
its  loyalty  to  Jewish  tradition  and  its  hold  on  the  Catholic 
faith. 


CHAPTER  V 

GNOSTICISM   AND    MONTANISM 

Marcion. — The  second  sect  which  split  off  and  organised 
itself  apart  from  the  Church  owed  its  origin  to  a  violent 
exaggeration  of  the  Pauline  attitude  towards  the  Jewish 
Law.  Marcion,  a  shipowner  of  Sinope  in  Pontus,  came 
to  Rome  between  a.d.  140  and  150^  and  there  began  to 
teach  principles  similar  to  those  on  account  of  which  one 
Cerdon  had  not  long  before  been  excommunicated.  Like 
the  Gnostics^  from  whom  in  many  ways  he  was  quite 
distinct^  Marcion  was  a  dualist^  that  is^  he  believed 
matter  and  spirit  to  be  essentially  antagonistic :  the 
material  world  was  the  sphere  of  evil,  and  could  not  be 
the  creation  of  a  good  God.  Hence  he  asserted  the 
existence  of  two  divine  Beings :  the  supreme  God,  ^the 
God  of  the  spirits  of  all  flesh/  made  known  to  us  through 
Jesus  Christ,  and  a  lower  Power,  the  Creator,  the  Lord 
of  the  Jewish  dispensation.  The  Jewish  God  was  only 
just ;  hence  He  and  His  people  were  quite  devoid  of  the 
higher  virtues :  the  saints  of  the  Old  Testament  were 
from  the  Christian  standpoint  evil  men.  But  the 
supreme  God  was  good  ;  and  His  goodness  could  only  be 
shared  by  those  who  recognised  that  the  God  and  the 
Law  of  the  old  covenant  must  be  repudiated  absolutely. 
From  these  principles  Marcion  argued  that  the  Church 
of  his  day  was  in  need  of  a  radical  anti-Judaic  reform  ; 
and  as  the  Roman  Church  refused  to  follow  his  lead,  he 
founded  a  separate  church,  organised  under  bishops  and 
presbyters  after  the  Catholic  model.  The  Marcionite 
doctrine  of  the  Person  of  Christ  was  shaped  to  fit  their 
dualistic  theory  :  Christ,  they  said,  came  down  from  the 

56 


GNOSTICISM  AND    MONTANISM      67 

good  God  to  deliver  men  from  the  Demiurgus  or  Creator  ; 
He  therefore  came  not  in  a  material  body^  but  as  a 
phantasm^  descending  to  teach  in  Capernaum  in  the 
fifteenth  year  of  Tiberius.  It  was  of  course  impossible 
for  men  who  held  these  views  to  accept  the  New  Testa- 
ment as  a  whole ;  and  Marcion  did  not  hesitate  to  pre- 
pare for  his  sect  a  canon  of  his  own^  consisting  of  a 
mutilated  version  of  S,  Luke,  together  with  ten  of  the 
Pauline  epistles,  from  which  all  that  sanctioned  the  Old 
Testament  had  been  removed. 

During  the  second  and  third  centuries  Marcionism  was 
vigorous  and  successful ;  its  adherents  lived  a  strictly 
ascetic  life  and  were  conspicuous  for  their  constancy 
under  persecution ;  and  although  in  the  fourth  century 
Constantine  attacked  them  with  oppressive  legislation, 
and  in  the  fifth  a  natural  affinity  for  the  teaching  of  the 
Manichseans  drew  many  of  them  off  to  that  powerful 
sect,  yet  as  late  as  a.d.  692  they  occupied  the  attention 
of  a  council,  and  even  in  the  middle  ages  they  had  not 
entirely  ceased  to  exist. 

The  origin  of  Gnosticism. — The  New  Testament  makes 
it  clear  that  the  teaching  of  the  Apostles  was  very  soon 
taken  up  and  distorted  by  various  forms  of  Jewish  re- 
ligious philosophy  {cf.  p.  26).  The  radical  principle  of 
these  distortions  was  always  a  belief  in  the  essentially 
evil  nature  of  matter.  To  this  was  due  the  denial 
that  Jesus  Christ  had  come  in  the  flesh  (1  S.  John  iv.  2, 
etc.),  the  elaboration  of  theories  about  the  place  of 
angels  in  the  universe  (Col.  ii.  18),  the  rejection  of 
marriage,  and  the  assertion  that  the  new  birth  of  the 
soul  was  the  only  resurrection  (2  Tim.  ii.  18).  These 
speculations  were  the  forerunners  of  a  series  of  move- 
ments which  in  the  second  century  threatened  to  over- 
whelm the  Christian  world  and  pervert  its  creed  into  a 
Pagan  philosophy.  Antioch  and  Alexandria  were  the 
two  centres  in  which  these  movements  took  shape. 

The  early  anti-heretical  writers,  from  Irenaeus  onwards, 
traced  the  origin  of  all  heresy  back  to  Simon  Magus,  the 
false  Messiah  of  Samaria.  Simon  pretended  to  be  an 
incarnation  of  the  supreme  God  (cf.  Acts  viii.  10),  and 
took  about  with  him,  it  is  said,  a  woman  called  Helena, 


58      CHURCH    HISTORY   TO    A.D.    325 

in  whom  he  asserted  that  a  female  divine  principle  was 
enshrined.  Jesus  Christ  was,  according  to  Simon,  merely 
an  earlier  manifestation  of  the  supreme  Power.  Simon's 
disciple  Menander  is  said  to  have  transplanted  this 
doctrine  to  Antioch.  It  is,  however,  impossible  to  trace 
the  real  genesis  of  the  kaleidoscopic  systems  which  we 
call  Gnostic ;  they  do  not  emerge  into  clear  light  before 
the  early  decades  of  the  second  century.  There  were 
then  in  Syria  adherents  both  of  Menander  and  of  another 
heresiarch,  Saturninus ;  while  in  Alexandria  Basilides 
(probably  about  120-130)  and  Valentinus  were  the  creators 
of  systems  not  fundamentally  diflferent  from  those  of  the 
Syrian  Gnostics,  but  more  Hellenic  in  character  and 
more  completely  dissociated  from  Judaism.  Valentinus 
came  to  Rome  in  the  middle  of  the  century — precise 
dates  cannot  be  given — and  the  influence  of  his  sect 
reached  even  to  the  Euphrates  valley,  where  Bardesanes 
(b.  about  150)  became  the  leader  of  a  school  of  Eastern 
Valentinians ;  while  Ptolemceus  and  Herakleon  (the 
earliest  commentator  on  S.  John)  were  the  chief  lights 
of  the  Western  or  Italian  school.  These  are  the  chief 
names  in  the  more  prominent  Gnostic  schools ;  but  be- 
side these,  the  intellectual  ferment  of  the  time  produced 
a  great  number  of  other  leaders  and  sections,  each  with 
its  peculiar  characteristics,  and  all  agreeing  only  in  the 
fact  that  the  chief  impetus  of  their  intellectual  life  came 
from  regions  alien  to  the  original  character  of  the  Church. 
It  is  almost  impossible  for  us  to  disentangle  the  com- 
plexities of  the  various  Gnostic  systems  as  the  anti- 
heretical  writers  present  them.  Very  little  Gnostic 
literature  has  been  allowed  to  survive  :  a  work  known  as 
Pistis  Sophia,  consisting  of  instructions  purporting  to 
have  been  given  by  our  Lord  to  His  disciples  during  the 
first  eleven  years  after  the  resurrection,  is  extant  in  a 
Coptic  translation ;  and  a  Syriac  Hymn  of  the  Soul, 
written  at  the  beginning  of  the  third  century  by  a 
disciple  of  Bardesanes,  is  a  beautiful  relic  of  Gnosticism 
at  its  best.  Of  anti-gnostic  writers,  Irenceus  of  Lyon 
(a.d.  180)  and  Eippolytus  of  Rome  (about  a.d.  225)  are 
the  most  considerable  ;  a  work  of  Epiphanius  of  Salamis 
(d.  A.D.  404)  is  also  extant :  it  is  called  Panarion,  or  Hhe 


GNOSTICISM    AND    MONTANISM     69 

bread-basket/  and  describes  a  very  great  variety  of 
heresies,  but  is  of  little  value  except  where  it  is  based  on 
the  work  of  Hippolytus. 

We  shall  here  neglect  the  differences  between  the 
various  forms  of  Gnosticism,  and  deal  only  with  two 
points  :  (1)  the  main  Gnostic  principles,  (2)  the  influence 
of  these  movements  upon  the  Church. 

The  main  principles  of  Gnosticism. — Gnosis  means  know- 
ledge, and  the  whole  of  Gnosticism  rests  on  an  exaggera- 
tion of  the  importance  of  knowledge  in  the  sphere  of 
religion.  The  Church  exists  in  order  that  men  may  be 
made  able  to  overcome  evil.  The  Gnostics  asked,  what 
and  whence  is  evil.?  and  the  whole  of  their  creed  was 
subordinated  to  the  answer.  Man,  they  said,  has  a  foot 
in  each  world  :  he  is  a  spirit,  but  he  is  confined  here  in 
a  material  body.  The  spirit  and  the  body  are  at  war 
with  one  another,  and  the  victory  of  the  body  over  the 
spirit  is  a  victory  of  evil  over  good.  How  is  it  that  the 
spirit  has  come  into  these  degrading  conditions  ?  If  God 
is  responsible  for  this,  He  cannot  be  called  good  ;  and  if 
He  must  be  good,  then  some  other  than  He  must  be  the 
maker  and  ruler  of  this  material  world  in  which  evil 
dwells.  The  Gnostics  thus  demanded  a  theory  of  the 
universe  as  a  prelude  to  religion.  They  mostly  agreed 
in  supposing  that  there  has  existed  eternally  one  ineffable 
Being ;  from  this  Being  a  series  of  powers  or  seons  have 
come  into  existence,  in  such  a  way,  however,  as  to  form, 
not  one  equal  world  of  spirits,  but  a  series  of  spheres  of 
existence,  each  further  removed  than  the  last  from  the 
supreme  Being,  and  less  capable  of  knowing  Him  and  its 
own  relation  to  Him.  The  material  world  is  the  pro- 
duct of  the  last  of  this  series,  and  the  evil  in  it  is  really 
a  kind  of  darkness  which  hides  from  material  beings 
their  true  place  in  the  universe  and  their  proper  distance 
from  the  Source  of  all  things.  At  this  point  Gnosticism 
begins  to  come  into  contact  with  the  Christian  revelation. 
Man  is  not  mere  matter :  he  has  in  him  a  spark,  as 
it  were,  of  the  eternal  Light,  and  this  spark,  his  spirit, 
is  capable  of  being  redeemed  from  the  prison-house  of 
bodily  evil.  The  Redeemer  is  One  Who  comes  from  the 
Father  of  all,  and  passing  through  all  grades  of  being 


60      CHURCH    HISTORY   TO   A.D.    825 

restores  to  each  its  proper  perfection.  To  us  He  came 
in  an  apparent  body,  and  seemed  to  suffer  and  die ;  He 
came  to  put  away  our  ignorance^  and  to  bring  us  the 
knowledge  of  what  we  truly  are.  In  an  old  Gnostic 
hymn  Christ  is  made  to  say  to  the  Father :  ^  I  will  open 
to  them  all  mysteries ;  I  will  show  them  the  forms  of 
divine  things ;  I  will  deliver  to  them  the  knowledge  of 
the  secrets  of  the  holy  way.' 

There  was  certainly  much  poetic  beauty  of  thought  in 
these  conceptions^  though  it  was  often  overlaid  by  the 
grotesque  fantasies^  borrowed  largely  from  Oriental 
sources_,  by  which  the  emanation  of  the  aeons  and 
their  mutual  relationships  were  depicted.  But  the 
chasm  which  separated  this  form  of  thought  from  the 
eommon  Christian  faith  was  deep  and  wide.  Two  points 
are  of  essential  importance  :  (a)  Christianity  is  universal; 
Gnosticism  was  exclusive.  Gnosis  was  not  even  offered 
to  all.  Men  were  divided  into  three  classes  —  the 
spiritual,  the  psychic,  and  the  material :  gnosis  was  said 
to  be  the  natural  prerogative  of  the  first ;  the  second 
consisted  of  common  Churchmen,  who  were  capable  of 
reaching  knowledge  if  they  sought  it ;  for  the  third  no 
redemption  was  possible.  Thus  the  initiated  members 
of  the  Gnostic  schools  regarded  themselves  as  occupying 
a  plane  which  common  men  could  not  reach.  (6)  With 
this  anti-Christian  exaltation  of  the  intellect  went  an 
equally  false  depreciation  of  the  wilh  To  be  saved 
meant  only  to  be  illuminated.  The  Gnostic  Gospel 
could  bring  no  strength  to  the  weak,  simply  because  by 
treating  sin  as  ignorance,  and  by  ascribing  essential 
badness  to  matter,  it  missed  the  whole  truth  of  moral 
responsibility.  Our  consciousness  tells  us  that  evil  is 
not  a  deficiency  in  the  mind,  but  a  defection  of  the  will, 
and  that  we  need  not  only  knowledge  but  the  power  to 
avoid  sinning  against  knowledge.  A  curious  result  of 
the  Gnostic  doctrine  of  moral  evil  was  that  it  led  to  two 
<|uite  opposite  results  :  some  Gnostics  betook  themselves 
to  a  strictly  ascetic  life,  as  enemies  of  the  flesh  ;  others, 
holding  that  flesh  and  spirit  were  so  different  and  distinct 
that  no  acts  of  the  body  could  have  any  effect  on  the 
higher  element,  treated  morality  as  unnecessary. 


GNOSTICISM   AND   MONTANISM      61 

The  Relation  of  Gnosticism  to  the  Church. — The  separat- 
ist sects  of  the  early  Church  were  products  of  movements 
which  began  within  the  Church  itself:  they  were  off- 
shoots of  Catholicism.  The  Gnostic  movement^  on  the 
other  hand^  was  essentially  Pagan  in  its  origin,  a  foreign 
growth  which  gradually  attached  itself  to  the  Church. 
But  for  the  unique  importance  ascribed  by  the  Gnostics 
to  Jesus  Christ,  it  might  be  said  that  the  Christian 
elements  in  their  teaching  were  almost  accidental.  A 
sect  driven  by  irreconcilable  divergence  of  views  to  break 
off  from  the  Church  would  have  been  a  far  less  menacing 
phenomenon  than  the  Gnostic  schools,  which  for  the 
most  part  adhered  to  the  Church,  and  professed  merely 
to  teach  a  truer  and  deeper  form  of  the  creed.  The 
leaders  of  these  schools  were  able  and  sometimes  learned 
men ;  and  their  offers  of  intellectual  satisfaction  must 
have  appealed  with  great  force  to  the  ambitions  of  the 
educated. 

In  answer  to  those  who  were  repelled  by  the  novelty 
of  their  views,  they  put  forward  an  audacious  claim  : 
they  pretended  that  the  Apostles  themselves  had 
preached  two  forms  of  Christianity,  the  lower  of  which 
corresponded  to  the  common  creed,  while  the  higher  had 
been  handed  down  as  a  secret  deposit.  Basilides  thus 
professed  to  teach  an  esoteric  doctrine  which  his  master 
Glaucias  had  derived  from  S.  Peter,  and  Valentinus 
claimed  a  similar  connection  through  one  Theodas  with 
S.  Paul. 

The  apostolic  writings  show,  of  course,  no  trace  of 
such  an  esoteric  tradition  ;  but  this  did  not  debar  the 
Gnostics  from  claiming  their  support.  Below  the  plain 
sense  of  the  letter  of  the  Scriptures,  they  claimed  the 
right  to  see  a  hidden  meaning ;  and  the  fatal  facility  of 
allegorical  interpretation  enabled  them  to  find  Scriptural 
reasons  for  quite  un-Scriptural  teaching ;  as  Irenaeus 
says,  they  picked  to  pieces  the  mosaic  of  Scripture,  and 
made  it  up  into  pictures  of  their  own  designing.  To 
these  abuses  of  the  authority  and  writings  of  the  Apostles 
the  Gnostic  movement  added  a  considerable  literary 
activity  :  numerous  apocryphal  Gospels  and  Acts 
(notably  a  collection  of  Gnostic  Acts,  formed  by  one 


62      CHURCH    HISTORY   TO   A.D.    825 

Leucius  Charinus)  belong  to  the  'countless  number  of 
spurious  scriptures'  whicli  Irenaeus  ascribes  to  it. 

The  life  of  the  Gnostic  associations  appealed  to  the 
emotions  as  well  asthe  intellect.  Like  the  contemporary 
Pagan  mysteries^  it  was  full  of  secret  and  symbolic  rites  ; 
many  of  these  were  believed  to  have  magical  efficacy 
against  the  powers  of  evil.  Some  of  the  sects  baptized 
the  initiated  with  oil  or  water,  using  incomprehensible 
formulae ;  others  subjected  them  to  the  form  of  a 
'spiritual  marriage/  or  branded  them  on  the  right  ear. 
The  prelude  to  the  highest  gnosis  in  one  sect  was  a 
'mystery  of  the  forgiveness  of  sins/  through  which  the 
remission  of  all  sins,  past,  present,  and  future,  was 
assured. 

With  these  allurements  for  the  intellect  and  the 
emotions.  Gnosticism  seems  to  have  stood  between 
Paganism  and  Christianity,  offering  to  effect  a  compro- 
mise between  them.  The  Christianity  which  it  offered 
to  the  heathen  world  was  essentially  heathen  in  character; 
it  might  therefore  have  found  wide  acceptance  if  the 
Church  had  chosen  to  make  use  of  it.  But  the  Church 
in  fact  repudiated  the  alliance,  and  treated  the  Gnostics 
— with  perfect  justice — as  foreign  invaders.  The  crush- 
ing of  this  invasion  has  been  compared  to  the  process  by 
which  a  healthy  body  gets  rid  of  the  germs  of  disease ; 
and  the  analogy  is  apt,  for  the  failure  of  Gnosticism  was 
everywhere  due  to  the  simple  vitality  of  the  Catholic 
tradition.  The  greatest  anti-gnostic  writers,  Irenaeus  in 
Gaul,  Tertullian  in  Africa,  Hippolytus  in  Rome,  did 
their  work  after  the  real  crisis  had  gone  by  ;  in  the 
critical  period— the  first  two-thirds  of  the  second  century 
— the  tenacity  with  which  common  Christians  held  on 
to  that  which  they  had  received,  had  already  made  the 
failure  of  the  Gnostic  innovations  inevitable. 

As  a  consequence  of  this,  the  positive  influence  of 
these  great  movements  upon  the  Church  was  astonish- 
ingly small.  Between  the  Gnostic  mysteries  and  sone 
later  conceptions  of  the  sacraments,  between  the  Gnostic 
separation  of  the  Divinity  from  the  Humanity  of  Christ, 
and  the  'two  natures'  of  the  Catholic  creed,  there  is  a 
certain  resemblance  but  no  historical  connection.     The 


GNOSTICISM    AND    MONTANISM     63 

influence  of  Gnosticism  was  in  fact  strictly  neg^ative.  In 
using  the  faith  and  the  apostolic  writings  against  heresy^ 
the  Church  became  more  clearly  aware  of  its  creed  and 
its  Scriptures.  The  Gnostics  preached  a  false  spiritualism 
and  made  war  on  the  Old  Testament :  the  only  result 
was  a  clearer  doctrine  of  the  Incarnation  and  an  increase 
of  interest  in  Jewish  prophecy.  They  sought  to  dis- 
credit the  current  expectations  of  our  Lord's  Second 
Advent,  and  encouraged  their  followers  to  make  terms 
with  Paganism  in  time  of  persecution ;  they  only  suc- 
ceeded in  stimulating  and  popularising  the  movement  of 
enthusiasm  and  rigorism  which  took  its  name  from  the 
Phrygian  prophet  Montanus. 

Montanism. — At  the  time  when  the  ferment  of  Gnosti- 
cism was  beginning  to  subside,  a  movement  within  the 
Church  began  to  re-assert  the  very  elements  of  Christian 
life  which  the  Gnostics  had  depreciated.  Montanus  was 
a  Phrygian,  an  ex-priest  of  Cybele,  it  was  said,  and 
about  156  he  began  to  proclaim  the  beginning  of  a  new 
era.  The  Father,  he  said,  had  been  known  to  the  Jews ; 
the  Incarnation  revealed  the  Son ;  the  last  age,  that  of 
the  Paraclete,  was  now  to  come.  A  new  revelation  was 
to  be  given :  the  Spirit  would  take  possession  of  the 
prophets.  His  mouthpieces,  in  such  a  way  that  their 
ecstatic  utterances  would  reveal  His  will  directly.  Such 
a  passive  organ  of  the  Spirit,  Montanus,  with  the  prophet- 
esses Prisca  and  Maximilla,  claimed  to  be.  His  ideal  was 
to  dissociate  the  Church  from  the  world,  and  to  form  a 
community  of  true  saints  who  should  reject  all  secular 
ties  and  await  the  near  approach  of  the  Second  Advent. 
In  Pepuza  and  Tymion,  two  villages  of  Phrygia,  this 
'  new  Jerusalem '  was  organised. 

Montanism  came  at  an  opportune  moment.  The 
severity  of  persecution  seemed  everywhere  a  presage  of 
the  coming  end,  while  the  expansion  of  the  Church  had 
brought  with  it  enough  moral  laxity  to  pave  the  way  for 
a  Puritan  reaction.  The  '  new  prophecy '  was  therefore 
not  slow  to  find  adherents  outside  Phrygia  in  Asia  Minor, 
Thrace,  Rome,  Gaul,  and  Africa.  But  the  Church  had 
not  forgotten  the  prophetic  charisma  of  the  apostolic 
age  ;  in  Asia  the  gift  had  been  exercised  by  Quadratus 


04      CHURCH    HISTORY    TO   A.D.    325 

and  Ammia  as  late  as  the  end  of  Trajan's  reign.  The 
frenzied  utterances  of  the  Montanists  were  felt  to  infringe 
the  precept,  ^the  spirits  of  the  prophets  are  subject  to 
the  prophets.'  Accordingly,  their  claim  to  possess  a 
new  and  paramount  authority  was  at  once  challenged. 
Some  of  the  clergy  attempted  to  expel  the  '  new  spirit ' 
by  exorcism  :  it  was  discussed  by  synods  of  bishops  (a 
new  institution),  and  combated  by  eminent  writers,  sucli 
as  Apollinarius  of  Hierapolis,  Miltiades,  and  Melito  of 
Sardis.  In  a.d.  177^  news  of  the  disturbing  influence  of 
the  Montanists  caused  the  imprisoned  brethren  of  Lyon 
to  write  a  letter  to  the  churches  of  Asia  and  Phrygia, 
and  to  send  Ireneeus  as  their  messenger  to  Eleutherus, 
bishop  of  Rome.  But  although  Montanism  was  widely 
felt  to  be  irregular,  it  was  not  formally  repudiated  ;  those 
who  sympathised  with  it  were  not  forced  into  schism 
before  the  beginning  of  the  third  century.  If  the  dis- 
orders of  Pepuza  and  Tymion  had  disfigured  the  move- 
ment elsewhere,  the  breach  with  the  Church  must  have 
come  much  sooner.  But  the  influence  of  the  Montanists 
in  the  west  was  greatest  after  a.d.  180,  when  the  last  of 
the  Phrygian  prophets  was  already  dead :  Montanism 
was  then  little  more  than  a  zealous  reforming  movement, 
which  seemed  more  likely  than  common  Christianity  to 
promote  spiritual  freedom  and  purity  of  life.  To  this 
promise  it  owed  its  greatest  convert,  Tertullian  of 
Carthage  (a.d.  160-230),  the  first  great  African  Father. 
Tertullian  was  a  vehement  and  uncompromising  en- 
thusiast, who  felt  deeply  the  need  of  a  militant  and 
purified  Church  which  would  make  no  terms  with 
heathenism  without  or  human  frailty  within.  In  a.d. 
202,  the  Roman  bishop  Zephyrinus,  after  some  hesitation, 
refused  to  communicate  with  the  Asiatic  Montanists ; 
not  long  after  this  Tertullian,  whose  sympathies  had 
long  been  with  the  zealots,  seceded  from  the  Church, 
and  the  Montanists  of  Carthage  became  a  separated  sect. 
The  sect  was  orthodox  in  doctrine,  and  apart  from  its 
respect  for  the  '  new  prophecy '  and  its  disrespect  for 
the  clergy,  differed  from  the  Church  only  in  the  strict- 
ness of  its  observances.  Thus  it  refused  to  allow  absolu- 
tion for  deadly  sins  committed  after   baptism,  treated 


GNOSTICISM    AND    MONTANISM      65 

second  marriages  as  sinful,  required  scrupulous  abstin- 
ence from  contact  with  heathen  customs,  forbade  its 
members  to  escape  from  persecution.  To  the  ordinary 
fasts  on  Wednesday  and  Friday  it  added  other  compul- 
sory times  of  fasting.  The  Church  had  come  to  see  a 
distinction  in  these  matters  between  what  was  necessary 
for  all  and  what  was  good  in  special  cases,  and  to  enjoin 
a  stricter  rule  on  the  clergy  than  on  the  laity.  The 
Montanists  rejected  this  distinction,  and  their  ideal  of 
the  Church  was  hostile  to  clericalism.  They  made,  in 
fact,  a  vigorous  attack  on  the  established  Church  order, 
setting  up  a  ^Church  of  the  Spirit'  and  'spiritual  men' 
in  opposition  to  the  existing  clergy :  divine  grace,  they 
said,  comes  not  through  bishops  and  priests  as  such,  but 
through  the  unfettered  descent  of  the  Spirit  upon  in- 
dividuals. Thus  they  were  far  from  denying  the  Church's 
authority  to  declare  absolution,  but  they  held  that  it 
could  be  exercised  only  by  men,  whether  clerical  or  lay, 
who  had  direct  relation  with  the  Spirit  as  prophets. 

The  seriousness  and  fervour  of  the  Montanists  taught 
the  Church  a  useful  lesson  at  a  critical  time.  They 
were  moved  by  the  same  desire  for  perfection  that  has 
created  all  the  great  movements  of  reformation.  But  at 
a  certain  point  they  ceased  to  be  true  reformers :  they 
began  by  trying  to  lift  the  Church,  but  ended  by  despair- 
ing of  it.  They  started  as  apostles  of  freedom  :  prophecy 
was  to  save  the  Church  from  a  stereotyped  tradition,  to 
substitute  the  liberty  of  the  Spirit  for  the  rule  of  an 
official  class,  to  put  the  genuine  voice  of  conscience  in 
the  place  of  a  conventional  moral  code.  Yet  their  new 
order  brought  not  liberty  so  much  as  a  change  of  masters; 
it  subjected  men  to  the  arbitrariness  of  prophetic  ecstasy 
and  to  a  rigour  that  made  no  allowances  for  human 
weakness.  The  result  was,  that  whatever  was  really 
novel  in  Montanism  soon  ceased  to  exercise  real  influence 
upon  the  Church. 


CHAPTER  VI 

APOLOGISTS    OP   THE    SECOND    CENTURY 

The  Cliurcli  about  A.D.  100. — After  seventy  years  of 
missionary  work,  the  Church  had  struck  its  roots  both 
deep  and  wide  in  the  soil  of  the  empire.  In  Palestine  the 
disastrous  revolt  of  a.d.  66  had  driven  the  Christians  of 
Jerusalem  northward,  and  scattered  them  among  the 
small  towns  of  the  Jordan  valley  and  Peraea;  while  in 
the  Greek  cities  of  the  coast,  and  especially  in  Caesarea, 
the  headquarters  of  imperial  administration,  strong 
Gentile  churches  were  growing  up.  In  North  Syria 
Antioch  was  still  the  most  important  centre ;  and  as  it 
had  sent  out  tlie  earliest  missionaries  westward,  so  again 
its  enterprise  pushed  out  eastward  in  the  second  century, 
and  even  crossed  the  Roman  frontier  to  found  churches 
in  and  near  Edessa.  In  Asia  Minor  the  Church  can  be 
traced  at  all  the  most  important  cities  round  the  three 
coasts ;  and  in  the  case  of  Bithynia,  a  positive  record  is 
preserved  of  the  movement  by  which  the  influence  of 
these  city  churches  radiated  over  the  surrounding  dis- 
tricts. ^The  contagion  of  this  superstition,'  wrote  Pliny 
in  112,  ^has  penetrated  not  only  the  cities,  but  also  the 
villages  and  the  country.'  Of  the  cities  on  the  western 
coast,  Ephesus,  Smyrna,  and  Sardis  were  the  most 
prominent  in  Christian  history.  Ephesus,  to  which  S. 
Paul's  long  residence  had  given  a  peculiar  importance, 
became  afterwards  the  home  of  the  Apostle  S.  John,  who 
lived  on  there  till  the  end  of  the  first  century.  The 
written  record  of  his  teaching,  and  the  traditions  of  those 
who  learned  from  him  there,  became  the  standard  of 
Asiatic  Christianity.  From  S.  John,  indeed,  and  his 
doctrine  of  the  Word  Incarnate,  all  that  was  best  in  the 


APOLOGISTS  OF  THE  SECOND  CENTURY     67 

theology  of  the  earliest  ages  drew  its  inspiration.  In 
connection  with  the  ^School  of  S.  John/  Papias  of 
Hierapolis,  Polycarp  of  Smyrna  (pp.  82-85),  Melito  of 
Sardis  (p.  88)  are  representative  Asiatic  names ;  and  one 
of  the  chief  distinctions  of  the  church  of  Smyrna  is  the 
fact  that  its  commercial  connection  with  the  west  was 
the  meaus  by  which  the  Johannine  type  of  Christianity 
was  carried  into  Southern  Gaul_,  where  Pothinus  (p.  89) 
and  Irenseus  of  Lyon  are  to  be  reckoned  as  great  pupils 
of  the  disciples  of  S.  John. 

Moving  further  west,  we  find  the  Pauline  churches  of 
Greece  still  flourishing,  and  pre-eminent  among  them  the 
church  of  Corinth,  which  maintained  close  relationships 
with  those  of  Athens,  Lacedsemon,  and  the  cities  of 
Crete.  In  Italy  there  is  no  trace,  at  least  in  the  earlier 
part  of  the  second  century,  of  any  Latin-speaking  church, 
nor  indeed  of  any  church  at  all,  except  in  Rome  and  its 
neighbourhood.  In  the  western  half  of  the  Mediterranean, 
the  origins  of  Christianity  are  obscure.  A  phrase  in  the 
letter  of  Clement  to  the  Corinthians  suggests  that  S.  Paul 
may  have  made  his  way  towards  Spain  ;  but  although 
Churches  existed  in  the  Peninsula  before  a.d.  200,  none 
of  them  were  reckoned  as  apostolic  foundations.  Pro- 
consular Africa,  with  its  capital  Carthage,  had  some 
seventy  parishes  by  the  beginning  of  the  third  century, 
and  must  therefore  have  received  its  earliest  missionaries 
(probably  from  Rome)  many  years  before.  Cyrene,  on 
the  other  hand,  owed  its  Christianity,  which  can  be 
traced  as  far  back  as  a.d.  150,  not  to  Rome,  but  to 
Egypt.  There  in  the  Delta  were  churches  of  great 
antiquity  :  that  of  Alexandria  was  even  old  enough  to 
claim  S.  Mark  as  its  founder. 

The  various  books  of  apocryphal  Acts  assert  that  the 
Apostles,  before  leaving  Jerusalem,  agreed  to  draw  lots 
for  the  assignment  of  a  missionary  province  to  each. 
Among  the  results  of  this  division  were  the  travels  of 
S.  Thomas  in  Parthia  or  India,  and  of  S.  Bartholomew 
in  Arabia.  'India'  was  doubtless  a  vague  expression, 
and  meant  little  more  than  'the  far  East';  but  the 
rumours  of  early  Christianity  in  Arabia  are  so  persistent, 
and  the  Jewish  colonies  on  the  Persian  Gulf  were  so 


68       CHURCH    HISTORY    TO    A.D.    325 

considerable,  that  the  apocryphal  '  sortitio  provinciarum  * 
may  perhaps  in  this  case  rest  on  some  foundation  of  fact. 
As  for  those  parts  of  the  empire  which  have  not  been 
mentioned,  such  as  Britain  and  the  regions  of  the 
Danube,  it  is  indeed  probable  that  the  legions  which 
held  them  numbered  some  Christians  in  their  ranks ;  but 
no  trace  of  organised  native  churches  can  be  found,  so 
that  it  is  roughly  correct  to  think  of  second-century 
Christianity  as  confined  to  the  Mediterranean  world. 
Within  that  area,  a  century  of  missions  had  established 
not  merely  a  number  of  local  churches,  but  also  a  single 
Catholic  Church,  united  alike  in  the  life  of  faith  which 
inspired  it  and  in  hostility  to  the  evils  of  the  Pagan  world. 
Literary  defence  of  Christianity. — The  second  age  of  the 
Church  was  a  period  of  great  expansion  and  greater  con- 
flicts. There  were  conflicts  internal  to  the  Church  :  the 
Christian  creed  and  life  were  interpreted  in  novel  ways 
— from  the  side  of  the  intellect  by  Gnosticism,  and  from 
that  of  the  conscience  by  Montanus  and  his  followers. 
We  are  now  to  deal  with  a  new  phase  of  the  external 
warfare  of  the  Church.  The  imperial  policy  of  repression 
was  allied  in  the  second  century  with  the  forces  of 
educated  opinion  ;  and  as  the  philosophers  began  to  treat 
the  Creed  as  a  rival  philosophy,  Christian  writers  began 
to  accept  the  challenge  of  their  criticism.  The  age  of 
the  ^Apologists,'  as  these  defensive  writers  are  called, 
begins  with  the  reign  of  Hadrian  (117-138) ;  the  last  and 
greatest  of  the  Apologies,  the  Treatise  against  Ceisus,  was 
published  by  Origen  in  249.  In  the  eight  books  of  this 
work,  Origen  made  an  elaborate  answer  to  a  criticism  of 
Christianity,  the  Tt'ue  Word  of  Ceisus,  which  had  ap- 
peared some  eighty  years  before.  Ceisus  was  certainly 
the  ablest  anti-Christian  thinker  of  the  second  century. 
Besides  the  mere  ill-will  and  prejudice  which  most  of  the 
apologists  had  to  combat,  he  confronted  his  enemy  the 
Church  with  historical  and  philosophical  arguments 
which  have  not  even  now  lost  all  their  force.  A  few 
points  in  this  polemic  may  be  selected  as  typical. 
Ceisus*  own  creed  was  a  curious  compromise.  His 
theory  was  that  of  a  Platonist :  he  believed  in  one 
ineffable  Being  whom  he  called  God  and  Providence ; 


APOLOGISTS   OF  THE  SECOND   CENTURY     69 

but  he  held  that  the  knowledge  of  this  Being  was  pos- 
sible for  none  but  philosophers.  He  quoted  with  approval 
a  sentence  from  the  TimcBus  of  Plato  :  ^  It  is  a  hard 
thing  to  find  out  the  Maker  and  Father  of  this  universe  ; 
and  after  having  found  him,  it  is  impossible  to  make  him 
known  to  all.'  He  was  conscious  that  the  essence  of 
religion  was  ^  never  to  lose  our  hold  on  God  in  word  or 
in  deed' :  and  yet  he  adhered  in  practice  to  the  common 
forms  of  polytheism.  He  asserted  the  existence  of 
subordinate  spirits,  to  whom  it  was  proper  to  discharge 
duties  of  piety :  proper,  because  these  things  were  in 
their  nature  divine,  and  because  such  a  worship  was 
established  by  custom,  and  could  not  be  neglected  with- 
out disloyalty.  The  worship  of  one  only  God  was  there- 
fore wrong  in  itself;  and,  moreover,  those  who  professed 
it  were  insincere,  for  Christianity  was,  in  fact,  the 
worship  of  two  Gods. 

Celsus  thus  attempted  to  make  the  best  both  of 
philosophy  and  of  common  sense ;  he  attacked  the 
Christian  creed  as  repugnant  to  both.  In  practice  he 
disliked  it,  because  it  was  not  respectable.  Like  con- 
jurers in  the  market-place.  Christian  teachers  gathered 
round  them  an  audience  of  foolish  and  disreputable 
persons,  slaves,  women  and  children.  Whereas  the 
heralds  of  the  mysteries  summon  only  those  who  are 
pure  and  just  to  be  initiated,  the  Christian  invitation  is 
addressed  to  sinners,  to  uneducated  men,  to  children,  to 
all  who  are  miserable.  In  theory,  he  regarded  it  as  a 
bad  philosophy  pretending  to  rest  on  a  history  which 
was  really  fictitious.  An  Incarnation  of  God  was  im- 
possible. Why  should  the  human  race  think  itself  so 
superior  to  bees,  ants,  and  elephants,  as  to  be  put  in  this 
unique  relation  to  its  Maker.''  Why,  again,  should  the 
Jews  be  regarded  as  a  specially  favoured  people,  so  that 
God  should  choose  to  come  to  men  as  a  Jew}  Celsus 
thought  it  more  reasonable  to  hold  that  each  part  of  the 
world  had  its  own  special  deity :  he  was  ready  to  admit 
that  prophets  and  supernatural  messengers  had  appeared 
in  more  places  than  one.  He  was  therefore  specially 
bitter  against  the  claim  of  Christianity  to  be  the  universal 
religion,  and  specially  anxious  to  bring  contempt  upon 


70       CHURCH    HISTORY    TO   A.D.    325 

the  birth^  teachiug^  and  life  of  its  Founder.  He  repeated 
a  Jewish  calumny  which  attributed  a  shameful  origin  to 
Jesus  Christ;  and  adopting  for  the  moment  the  standpoint 
of  a  JeWj  argued  that  nothing  in  His  life  corresponded 
with  the  Jewish  messianic  expectations.  The  real  Jesus 
Christ,  he  said,  was  a  sorcerer,  a  criminal,  who  was 
punished  by  scourging  and  crucifixion  :  the  genealogies 
of  the  gospels  were  invented  as  a  cloak  for  the  baseness 
of  his  origin  and  character.  Moreover,  from  the  begin- 
ning to  the  end  his  life  was  a  failure.  He  may  have 
predicted  his  end,  but  he  could  not  inspire  enough 
loyalty  in  the  few  sailors  and  tax-gatherers  who  followed 
him,  to  save  himself  from  it.  He  was  not  strong  enough 
in  supernatural  gifts  even  to  disappear  from  the  cross  on 
which  he  sufi'ered ;  and  yet  Christians  were  ready  to 
believe  that  such  a  man  as  this  rose  from  the  grave. 
Perhaps  he  did  not  die  at  all,  but  only  fell  into  a  trance 
for  a  day  or  two  ;  at  any  rate,  the  story  of  his  reappear- 
ance rested  only  on  the  evidence  of  one  poor  woman  and 
a  few  of  his  intimate  companions.  How  could  such  a 
marvel  as  the  Resurrection,  if  it  really  happened,  have 
remained  unnoticed?  Would  not  the  victorious  Jesus 
have  shown  himself  everywhere  to  convince  the  world  ? 

Such  are  a  few  of  the  objections  by  which  an  un- 
sympathetic reader  of  the  gospels  in  the  second  century 
could  justify  his  contempt  for  the  faith  and  life  of  the 
Church.  To  many  of  them  Origen  was  able  to  make  an 
effective  answer ;  but  such  men  as  Celsus  were  not  likely 
to  be  affected  by  argument :  he  was  too  completely  alien 
from  the  spirit  of  Christianity  to  feel  the  force  of  the 
moral  facts  by  which  his  position  was  really  made  un- 
tenable. The  apologists,  who  were  for  the  most  part 
hardly  able  to  deal  effectively  with  technical  questions 
of  philosophy,  could  at  least  take  unassailable  ground 
when  they  appealed  to  the  lives  of  weak  and  sinful  men 
whom  the  fellowship  of  Christ  had  really  transformed. 

The  Christian  defence:  Quadratus  and  Aristides.— The 
earliest  apology  was  that  of  Quadratus,  who  presented  his 
work  to  Hadrian  in  126  or  127,  when  the  emperor  was 
visiting  Athens.  Nothing  remains  of  this  treatise  except 
a  small  fragment,  in  which  Quadratus  points  to  the  real 


APOLOGISTS  OF  THE   SECOND  CENTURY    71 

and  permanent  effect  of  the  miracles  of  our  Lord  ;  some 
of  those  whom  He  healed  lived  on^  Quadratus  says^  to 
his  own  time.  Another  Athenian^  Aristides,  in  the  time 
either  of  Hadrian  or  of  Antoninus  Pius,  wrote  a  defence 
of  the  faith  which  was  well-known  in  the  fourth  century, 
but  had  since  disappeared,  and  was  only  re-discovered  in 
1889.  In  the  meanwhile,  this  apology  had  had  one  most 
remarkable  adventure.  A  Christian  romance,  called  the 
story  of  Barlaam  and  Josaphat,  which  was  really  based 
on  a  very  old  Buddhist  legend,  contains  a  speech  put 
into  the  mouth  of  one  Nachor,  whose  part  in  the  story 
is  to  assume  the  role  of  a  feeble  apologist,  and  so  to 
prevent  Josaphat  from  becoming  a  Christian.  Nachor, 
however,  is  forced  against  his  will  to  make  so  powerful  a 
defence  of  the  faith  that  both  he  and  Josaphat  are  con- 
verted. In  1890,  it  was  discovered  that  this  speech  of 
Nachor  was  nothing  else  than  the  Apology  of  Aristides. 
It  is  in  reality  an  attack  on  the  current  forms  of  Pagan 
belief,  combined  with  a  sober  and  beautiful  defence  of 
the  life  which  Christians  lead. 

Justin  Martyr. — ^The  work  of  Justin  the  martyr  is  of 
greater  importance.  Justin  was  a  native  of  Flavia 
Neapolis,  the  ancient  Sichem.  Born  about  the  year  100, 
he  was  driven  abroad  in  early  manhood  by  the  unsettled 
state  of  the  country,  which  was  then  ripening  for  the 
rebellion  of  Bar-Cochba  (p.  49).  He  had  received  the 
normal  education  of  a  Greek,  but  his  thirst  for  real 
knowledge  drove  him  from  one  school  of  philosophy  to 
another  in  search  of  enlightenment.  Platonism  alone 
gave  him  real  hope:  ^the  contemplation  of  ideas,'  he 
says,  'furnished  my  mind  with  wings,  so  that  I  expected 
soon  to  have  the  vision  of  God.'  At  Ephesus,  however, 
he  fell  in  with  an  old  man  whose  conversation  carried 
him  beyond  Plato  to  the  Jewish  prophets,  and  from  the 
prophets  to  Christ.  After  his  conversion  he  travelled 
to  Rome,  and  there  became  a  teacher — not  a  missionary 
preacher  in  the  old  sense,  but  a  teacher  of  the  Christian 
philosophy.  He  still  wore  the  cloak  of  a  philosopher; 
and  when  he  appeared  as  a  defender  of  the  faith,  he  did 
so,  not  as  the  opponent  of  reason,  but  as  its  champion. 
He  did    good  work  in   Christian   controversy,   writing 


?2      CHURCH    HISTORY   TO   A.D.    326 

against  Marcion  and  the  Gnostics;  but  of  his  writings 
only  three  remain:  (1)  an  apology  addressed  to  the 
emperor  Antoninus  Pius_,  (2)  a  shorter  apology  addressed 
to  the  Roman  Senate,  (3)  a  dialogue  with  the  Jew 
Trypho.  The  last  of  these  contains  the  story  of  his 
conversion,  but  is  mainly  taken  up  with  the  subjects  we 
should  expect  to  find  discussed  in  an  argument  with  a 
Jew.  Justin  shows  that  it  is  possible  to  disregard  the 
ceremonial  law  without  denying  its  divine  origin ;  that 
the  Incarnation,  Passion,  Resurrection,  and  Ascension, 
all  of  them  historical  facts,  had  been  predicted  in  the 
very  Scriptures  in  which  the  Jews  professed  belief;  and 
that  the  old  covenant,  with  its  narrow  particularism,  was 
never  meant  to  be  permanent,  but  had  been  superseded 
by  a  new  covenant  open  to  Gentile  and  Jew  alike  :  the 
old  must  therefore  be  abandoned  ;  the  Jew  must  find  his 
home  in  the  new  Israel  of  God. 

The  brief  Second  Apology  was  called  forth  by  a  shame- 
less episode  of  persecution,  and  by  Justin's  apprehension 
that  he  himself  would  soon  be  attacked.  The  wife  of  a 
magistrate  had  been  converted :  her  revolt  against  the 
profligacies  of  her  old  life  had  enraged  the  husband,  who 
proceeded  both  against  his  wife  and  her  teacher,  and  had 
them  put  to  death.  Justin  himself  had  made  an  enemy 
of  one  Crescens,  a  philosopher  of  the  sect  of  Cynics ;  on 
his  philosophy  Justin  pours  contempt,  just  as  the  satirist 
Lucian  ridiculed  the  sect  at  large  :  he  had  disputed  with 
him,  and  found  him  both  ignorant  and  inaccessible  to 
conviction.  Justin  suspected  the  man  of  malice,  and 
wrote  an  appeal  to  the  senate  for  justice.  The  Christians, 
he  says,  so  far  from  being  the  cause  of  social  evil,  form 
the  only  pure  element  in  a  corrupt  world  :  they  are  hated 
— and  Christ  was  hated — for  the  same  reason  which  has 
set  the  world  at  enmity  with  all  its  best  teachers,  namely, 
that  their  life  is  guided  by  the  indwelling  of  the  Divine 
Word,  whom  the  evil  world  cannot  but  hate.  They  are 
allowed  to  sufi"er  for  discipline  and  probation,  not  for 
punishment ;  the  crimes  with  which  they  are  charged 
are  those  from  which  none  but  they  are  free.  Moreover, 
their  strength  in  suffering  should  weigh — Justin  says 
that  it  had  weighed  with  him   in   his  Pagan  days — in 


APOLOGISTS  OF  THE   SECOND  CENTURY    73 

their  favour :  sensual  men  could  not  leave  the  world 
with  so  little  reluctance.  Justin  therefore  begs  that 
this  defence  may  be  published  :  he  asks  only  for  fair 
judgment,  and  for  the  admission  that  Christian  doctrine 
is  not  a  unique  moral  monstrosity,  or  parallel  to  the 
most  despicable  forms  of  current  sensuality,  but  worthy 
to  be  compared  with  and  set  above  the  highest  thought 
of  the  time. 

The  First  Apology  is  of  unique  interest,  on  account  of 
the  remarkable  frankness  with  which  it  publishes  aspects 
of  Christian  truth  and  practice  which  no  apologetic 
writer  but  Justin  ever  thought  it  well  to  divulge. 
Three  broad  questions  are  raised  and  discussed  :  (1)  Why 
should  Christians  be  treated  as  criminals.''  (2)  What  is 
Christian  belief .''  (3)  What  is  Christian  practice  .»*  In 
answering  the  first  of  these  questions,  Justin  pleads  that 
crime  means  action,  not  opinion ;  and  if  the  actions  of 
Christians  are  examined,  though  some  wrong-doing  may 
be  brought  home  to  individuals,  it  will  be  found  that  the 
Christian,  as  such,  is  neither  atheist  nor  immoral :  he  is 
one  who  lives  under  the  eye  of  God  and  renders  Him  a 
reasonable  service.  The  teaching  of  his  Master  enjoins 
pure  living,  and  (though  evil  spirits  misrepresent  it) 
makes  for  civil  obedience :  the  kingdom  to  which  he 
aspires  is  heavenly,  and  its  subjects  are  the  best  friends 
an  earthly  king  could  wish  to  have ;  expecting  the 
Resurrection  and  the  Judgment,  they  turn  away  from 
everything  which  makes  judgment  terrible. 

Next,  the  Christian  doctrine  is  not  without  its  parallel 
in  Pagan  belief:  the  mythologies  are  full  of  ^sons  of  the 
gods ' ;  we  believe  in  one  Son  of  God,  of  whom  we  re- 
count no  wicked  fables.  What  we  say  of  Him  can  be 
shown  to  be  the  fulfilment  of  prophecy,  and  to  rest  on 
revelations  far  older  than  any  in  the  Greek  mythology  ; 
we  can  prove  that  this  is  the  only  Son  of  God,  His  Word 
and  First-begotten,  the  Saviour  of  the  whole  race  of 
men  ;  and  that  the  Pagan  creed  is  full  of  '  anticipations ' 
designed  by  the  enemies  of  man's  welfare  to  discredit  the 
Christian  revelation.  Here  there  is  no  trace  of  reserve  ; 
the  doctrine  of  the  Incarnation  is  candidly  stated,  and 
the  Old  Testament  appealed  to  without  apology  to  support 


74      CHURCH    HISTORY   TO   A.D.    326 

it.  But  this  spirit  of  candour  is  even  more  strikingly- 
shown  in  the  third  part  of  the  hook.  There  Christian 
worship  is  described,^  ^for  fairness'  sake/  as  Justin  says, 
that  his  defence  may  not  be  thought  to  gloze  over  awk- 
ward subjects.  First  Baptism  is  described,  then  the 
Sunday  Eucharist ;  and  Justin  appeals  to  the  emperor 
for  fair  treatment  with  a  final  dilemma :  '  this  is  our 
worship — if  it  is  reasonable,  honour  it ;  if  foolish,  despise 
it;  but  do  not  persist  in  treating  as  criminals  men  against 
whom  nothing  like  crime  can  fairly  he  charged.' 

It  is  important  to  notice  the  dispassionate  tone  of  these 
three  works.  The  Dialogue  witli  Trypho  is  not  such  an 
argument  as  could  have  contented  S.  Paul,  for  instance. 
The  Jewish  interlocutor  is  no  zealot  or  proselytiser  :  he 
approaches  Justin  and  his  ideas  with  the  respect  due  from 
one  philosopher  to  another,  is  glad  to  get  information, 
learns  more  than  he  expected,  and  would  like  to  hear 
more.  And  Justin  himself,  though  permeated  with  con- 
viction, has  caught  much  of  the  accent  of  the  schools. 
While  more  ardent  spirits,  as  we  shall  see,  had  eyes  only 
for  the  grossness  of  the  Pagan  world,  Justin  is  eager  to 
claim  kinship  to  Christ  for  all  that  has  ever  been  good 
and  true  outside  the  Church.  '  Whatever  any  one  has 
truly  spoken  belongs  to  us  Christians';  Pagan  thinkers 
and  legislators  ^  were  able  to  see  realities  darkly  through 
the  scattered  seed  of  the  implanted  Word  that  was  in 
them.'  It  would  not  be  true  to  say  that  Justin  lowers 
Christian  truth  to  the  level  of  secular  science  ;  on  the 
contrary,  he  conceives  of  wisdom  and  the  love  of  wisdom 
as  the  highest  activity  of  the  human  soul,  'a  great 
possession  and  most  honourable  in  the  sight  of  God,  to 
Whom  it  leads  us.'  This  insight  places  Justin  on  a  level 
with  the  best  Christian  thinkers  of  the  early  Church  ;  it 
allies  him  in  particular  with  the  great  men  of  Alexandria, 
Clement  and  Origen,  whose  breadth  of  culture  endowed 
them  with  a  generous  vision  of  the  manifold  though 
partial  revelations  by  which  God  had  prepared  the 
Hellenic  world  for  Christ. 

Aristides,  Justin,  Melito  of  Sardis  (about  a.d.   175), 

1  For  a  further  reference  to  Justin's  description,  see  p.  129. 


APOLOGISTS  OF  THE  SECOND   CENTURY    75 

Athenagoras  (between  a.d.  176  and  180),  stand  together  as 
'  phil-Hellenic '  apologists  :  their  attitude  to  non-Christian 
philosophy^  as  philosophy,  is  what  we  should  call  liberal. 
Militant  apologists:  Tatian. — A  different  standpoint 
was  taken  by  Justin's  pupil  Tatian,  and,  among  others, 
the  great  African  father  TertulUan.  Tatian  was  a  native 
of  Mesopotamia,  an  Assyrian.  He  came  to  Rome  in  the 
middle  of  the  second  century,  and  became  a  pupil  of 
Justin.  He  was,  we  should  judge,  a  man  of  violent  and 
impulsive  temperament ;  and,  like  Tertullian,  in  his 
later  years  he  found  ordinary  Churchmen  too  little  in- 
clined to  wage  desperate  war  against  the  world,  and 
joined  a  puritan  sect  pledged  to  abstinence  from  flesh, 
wine,  and  marriage.  Of  his  writings,  the  work  which 
gave  him  real  importance  was  a  Harmony  of  the  Four 
Gospels,  or  Diatessaron,  which  had  a  wide  circulation, 
especially  in  Syria  and  Mesopotamia,  and  even  supplanted 
the  separate  gospels  as  a  liturgical  book.  He  also  wrote 
two  or  three  theological  treatises,  which  were  much  re- 
spected by  his  contemporaries  :  these  have  perished,  and 
the  only  work  of  his  now  extant  is  an  Address  to  Greeks, 
which  is  so  far  ^apologetic'  or  ^ defensive '  that  it  aims 
at  establishing  the  reasonableness  of  the  faith  as  against 
the  absurdities  of  Greek  thought  and  religion.  In  tone, 
however,  it  is  not  in  the  least  defensive ;  it  lashes  un- 
sparingly the  immorality  of  the  old  myths  :  it  says  of  the 
old  gods,  not  that  they  do  not  exist,  but  that  they  are  in 
reality  demons  (an  idea  common  among  Christians  at  the 
time)*;  they  have  power,  but  merely  a  malignant  power, 
which  has  given  to  God's  whole  handiwork  an  appearance 
of  evil ;  they  are  worshipped  only  by  the  wicked  who 
need  them  to  minister  to  their  corrupt  passions.  As  for 
the  philosophers,  past  and  present,  Tatian  has  no  respect 
for  them  :  alike  in  teaching  and  in  life,  they  are  found 
ridiculous.  Plato  was  a  gourmand,  Aristotle  a  flatterer  ; 
Stoics  and  Cynics  are  equally  empty  of  wisdom.  Tatian 
tells  how  he  has  gone  through  the  Pagan  world  and  found 
its  wisdom  mere  words,  its  gods  and  worship  wicked,  its 
legislation  lawless;  and  has  turned  to  certain  barbaric 
writings,  in  which  he  has  found  an  older  religion  and  an 
older  philosophy.      This  is  the  truth  that  God  is  One, 


76       CHURCH    HISTORY   TO   A.D.    325 

and  has  given  to  man  both  freedom  and  a  law,  through 
which  he  may  win  immortality.  The  Word  of  God  has 
dwelt  in  a  human  body ;  and  those  who  approach  God 
through  him  have  the  Spirit  of  God  dwelling  in  them  to 
enlighten  them.  This  union  with  God  is  man's  true  end, 
the  hidden  treasure  which  only  Christians  find.  Such 
thoughts  as  these  are  scattered  up  and  down  this  rather 
incoherent  treatise,  which  is  a  strange  mixture  of  blind- 
ness and  insight.  It  must  be  regarded,  however,  with 
all  its  lack  of  balance,  as  expressing  a  profound  truth. 
The  real  beauty  of  Greek  thought  and  religion  had  never 
had  the  power  to  purify  common  life  ;  it  had  been  felt 
only  by  the  few.  Tatian  looked  only  at  its  practical 
results,  and  saw  that  beneath  the  chaos  of  opinions  and 
the  wreckage  of  mythology,  there  lay  no  conviction  that 
worked  for  righteousness.  It  was  therefore  just  to  ask 
what  Paganism  meant  for  common  men,  and  so  to  judge 
it  at  its  worst,  and  contrast  it  violently  with  a  creed  that 
offered  the  best  to  all,  and  put  the  highest  life  within 
the  reach  of  even  the  lowest  of  fallen  men. 

Minucius  Felix. — The  earliest  Christian  document  in 
the  Latin  language  is  also  an  '^ apology' — the  Octavius  of 
Minucius  Felix.  Minucius  was  probably  a  native  of  the 
Roman  colony  of  Cirta  in  Numidia;  like  the  other 
African  fathers,  Cyprian,  Arnobius,  and  Lactantius,  he 
was  by  profession  a  lawyer,  and  at  the  time  when  he 
wrote  the  Octavius  (about  175)  had  settled  and  begun  to 
practise  in  Rome.  The  Octavius  is  a  dialogue  in  the 
manner  of  Cicero,  from  a  study  of  whose  style  Minucius 
had  learned  to  write  clear  and  polished  Latin.  The 
characters  are  three  lawyers — Caecilius  Natalis,  Octavius, 
and  the  writer.  It  is  the  beginning  of  the  autumn 
vacation,  and  Minucius  is  walking  with  his  friends  on 
the  shore  at  Ostia,  enjoying  the  air  and  the  sand  and  the 
sea,  and  watching  the  children  play  ^  ducks  and  drakes.' 
As  they  walk,  Cascilius  notices  an  image  of  the  Egyptian 
god  Serapis,  and  salutes  it  by  kissing  his  hand.  The 
Christian  Octavius  demurs  at  once  :  '  How  is  it,'  he  asks 
Minucius,  ^that  an  intimate  friend  of  yours  can  bring 
himself  to  be  so  superstitious. '  Caecilius  broods  over  the 
question  for  a  time  in  silence,  but  at  length  takes  up  the 


APOLOGISTS  OF  THE  SECOND  CENTURY    77 

implied  challenge :  the  friende  settle  themselves  on  one 
of  the  long  groynes  with  which  the  sea-baths  are  pro- 
tected, Minucius  sits  as  umpire  between  the  other  two, 
and  the  discussion  begins.  Caecilius  speaks  first,  and 
delivers  a  vivacious  attack  on  Christianity.  First  he 
takes  Epicurean  ground  :  how  should  men  so  uneducated 
as  the  Christians  be  able  to  resolve  the  hardest  question 
of  philosophy;  what  ground  can  they  have  for  their 
assurance  about  God ;  where  is  He  to  be  seen  in  the 
fortuitous  coalescence  of  atoms  which  we  call  the  world, 
or  in  indiscriminate  catastrophes  which  put  an  end  to 
good  and  bad  alike,  and  make  the  belief  in  a  moral  Ruler 
impossible.  If  there  must  be  a  religion,  men  should  re- 
spect tradition  and  the  established  worship.  History 
shows  (here  a  new  position  is  taken  up)  that  the  old  gods 
have  always  aided  their  worshippers  and  punished  the 
irreligious;  it  is  therefore  mere  audacity  for  a  secret 
faction  to  rebel  against  them,  especially  for  such  men 
as  the  Christians,  whose  bond  of  union  is  the  crime  of 
human  sacrifice,  who  shun  the  light  of  day,  who  are  as 
silent  in  public  as  they  are  loquacious  among  themselves. 
Their  meetings  are  the  occasion  of  vile  immorality  :  they 
worship  the  head  of  an  animal  ^  :  their  leader  was  a  felon 
crucified  :  at  their  initiation  a  child  is  killed  and  eaten. 
They  are  worse  than  the  Jews,  for  the  Jews  had  at  least 
a  God,  a  temple,  and  a  ritual  of  sacrifices;  while  the 
Christians  have  only  the  figment  of  an  omnipresent  spirit. 
Their  crowning  absurdity  is  a  belief  in  the  resurrection 
of  the  body,  which  they  think  to  facilitate  by  using  burial 
rather  than  cremation.  Finally,  they  are  wretched  in 
spite  of  their  God,  persecuted,  unsociable,  enemies  to 
pleasure :  they  make  the  worst  of  this  world  and  are 
deluded  as  to  the  next. 

The  attack  is  violent,  inconsistent,  unfair ;  but  it 
doubtless  represents  the  type  of  opinion  which  Minucius 
found  current  among  his  Pagan  contemporaries.  Octa- 
vius'   reply  is  threefold.      The  first  part  is  a  protest 

1  This  charge  has  been  explained  by  the  discovery  at  Rome  of 
a  rough  caricature  of  the  Crucifix,  in  which  the  figure  has  the 
head  of  an  ass  r  underneath  is  written,  '  Alexamenos  worships  hia 
God.' 


78      CHURCH    HISTORY   TO    A.P.    326 

against  the  Epicurean  agnosticism  of  Ciecilius.  Appeal 
is  made  to  the  evidences  of  order  in  the  world  and  to  the 
common  conscience  of  mankind^  the  ^natural  Christi- 
anity' of  unperverted  reason.  It  is  useless^  Octavius 
says,  to  say  that  the  illiterate  have  no  right  to  think 
about  God,  for  they  are  men,  and  all  men  have  a  capacity 
for  the  knowledge  of  God ;  and  that  of  a  God  greater 
than  their  own  thoughts — infinite,  sole,  unnameable.  In 
the  second  place,  it  is  absurd  for  an  agnostic  to  be  at 
the  same  time  a  vindicator  of  the  old  religion,  of  its 
Pantheon  crowded  with  deified  men  and  apotheoses  of 
natural  forces,  of  the  fetishism  which  demands  worship 
for  statues,  of  the  culpable  ignorance  which  subjects 
human  lives  to  the  fear  of  evil  spirits.  Finally — and 
this  is  the  genuinely  apologetic  part  of  the  dialogue — the 
true  facts  of  the  Christian  life  are  convincing  in  disproof 
of  Caecilius'  aspersions.  We  are  not  a  close  corporation 
of  criminals,  but  a  growing  body  of  chaste  and  sober 
men.  We  have  no  image  of  God,  for  we  are  made  in 
His  image ;  we  believe  that  He  is  not  far  off,  and  do  not 
need  images  to  remind  us  of  Him.  As  for  immortality 
and  the  resurrection,  a  student  of  Plato  and  Pythagoras 
will  not  find  them  absurd.  God  Who  made  us  can  re- 
make. Burial  is  indeed  our  custom,  but  it  is  only  ?, 
custom,  not  a  principle.  As  for  the  specific  moral 
charges,  we  must  be  judged  by  our  character ;  you  will 
find  no  Christian  guilty  of  crime,  except  the  crime  of 
being  a  Christian.  Our  poverty  is  no  shame  ;  our  suffer- 
ings are  no  penalty,  but  a  discipline.  No  one  would 
endure  what  we  endure  without  a  worthy  reason  ;  no  one 
could  endure  it  unless  God  were  with  him.  As  for  our 
abstinence,  we  stand  aloof,  not  from  the  world,  but  from 
the  evil  in  the  world ;  as  for  our  ignorance,  it  is  our  life 
that  is  great,  not  our  words  ;  it  is  our  boast  that  we  have 
found  what  all  the  philosophers  have  sought  in  vain. 


CHAPTER  VII 

CHURCH    AND   STATE   FROM   HADRIAN    TO    GOMMODUS 

From  considering  specimens  of  Christian  thought  on  its 
defence,  we  now  go  on  to  trace  the  history  of  that  politi- 
cal policy  of  repression  which  the  apologists  strove  in 
vain  to  mitigate.  We  have  seen  that  the  first  seventy 
years  of  the  Church's  life  brought  about  a  bitter  hostility 
between  Christians  and  the  empire.  Merely  to  be  a 
Christian  became  a  crime  punishable  with  death  ;  persons 
suspected  were  liable  to  be  hunted  down  and  brought 
before  the  magistrates :  no  one  was  safe  against  the 
covetous  curiosity  of  the  informer.  The  causes  which 
led  to  this  state  of  war  persisted  throughout  the  second 
century.  On  the  one  side  was  the  determination  of  the 
Church  to  keep  herself  pure  fi-om  the  taint  of  idolatry^ 
and  especially  of  the  imperial  worship  ;  on  the  other,  the 
official  consciousness  that  the  unity  of  the  empire  had  no 
more  necessary  safeguard  than  the  unity  of  its  official 
religion,  and  the  popular  animosity  to  a  society  which 
abjured  all  the  popular  standards  of  right  and  wrong. 
But  the  actual  conflict  varied  greatly  in  method  and 
intensity :  neither  the  official  nor  the  popular  hostility 
to  the  Church  maintained  itself  at  one  level.  An  epoch, 
we  saw,  was  marked  by  the  policy  of  Trajan,  who  by 
forbidding  organised  search  for  Christians,  and  expressing 
strong  disapproval  of  anonymous  information,  made  the 
conditions  of  prosecution  more  difficult,  and  so  procured 
for  the  Church  a  certain  degree  of  unmolested  peace. 

Reign  of  Hadrian,  A.D.  117-138. — Trajan  died  in  117,  and 
was  succeeded  by  his  cousin  Hadrian,  a  man  whose  eager 
interests,  wide  but  never  deep,  contrasted  strongly  with 
the  firm  and  wise  temperament  of  the  true  statesman 
whom  he  succeeded.     Hadrian  viewed  all  religions  from 

79 


80      CHURCH    HISTORY    TO   A.D.    325 

without,  with  a  strange  mixture  of  curiosity  and  con- 
tempt:  a  restless  traveller,  he  became  acquainted  with 
many  creeds,  but  found  rest  in  none.  At  Rome  he  com- 
bined the  necessary  conservatism  of  the  oflGicial  with  the 
eclecticism  of  the  unattached  philosopher,  inclining  to 
the  tenets  of  that  Stoic  Epictetus  whom  his  predecessor, 
Domitian,  had  banished  ;  at  Athens  he  was  initiated  into 
the  mysteries  of  Eleusis,  solemn  with  the  presage  of  im- 
mortality, and  reached  the  higher  grades  of  esoteric 
knowledge.  From  Alexandria  he  wrote  to  a  friend, 
Servianus,  a  few  contemptuous  and  cynical  lines  on  the 
chaos  of  religions  with  which  that  bewildering  city  was 
distracted.  '  Here  the  worshippers  of  Serapis  are  Chris- 
tians, and  those  who  call  themselves  bishops  of  Christ 
are  devotees  of  Serapis  ;  the  ruler  of  a  Jewish  synagogue, 
the  Samaritan,  the  Christian  presbyter,  is  sure  to  be  an 
astrologer  or  a  soothsayer  or  a  trainer.  If  the  Jews* 
patriarch  himself  comes  to  Egypt,  he  is  compelled  to 
adore  now  Serapis  and  now  Christ.  Money  is  their  real 
god :  that  is  a  religion  to  which  Christian,  Jew,  and 
every  kind  of  Gentile  does  adhere.'  ^A  meddler  with 
the  unsearchable,'  '  the  imperial  sophist,'  were  the  names 
with  which  Julian,  two  centuries  later,  described  his 
predecessor's  temper.  Under  such  an  emperor,  it  was 
natural  that  no  searching  ordinance  could  be  executed 
against  the  Church.  There  was  persecution,  and  the 
names  at  least  of  many  martyrs  (among  them  the  Roman 
bishop  Telesphorus,  about  117-127)  are  preserved ;  but  it 
must  have  been  due  to  sporadic  and  local  outbreaks  of 
popular  feeling.  The  apologies  of  Quadratus  and  Aris- 
tides  were  both  presented  to  Hadrian,  and  apologies  were 
impossible  in  times  of  unbroken  peace ;  indeed,  Quad- 
ratus begins  by  complaining  that  'certain  wicked  men 
have  been  trying  to  molest  our  people.'  These  words 
must  be  taken  as  evidence  of  measures  hostile  to  the 
Church  at  Athens ;  and  from  Asia  we  know  that  official 
application  was  made  by  a  provincial  governor,  Serenus 
Granianus  (about  124),  for  the  imperial  advice  and  policy 
in  a  question  of  persecution. 

Rescript  to  Minucius  Fundanus. — Hadrian's  answer,  sent 
to  Serenus'  successor,  Minucius  Fundanus,  is  still  extant. 


FROM    HADRIAN   TO   COMMODUS    81 

Jt  is  written  to  protect  the  innocent  from  disturbance,  and 
to  put  difficulties  in  the  way  of  dishonest  informers.  If  the 
provincials  care  to  come  into  court  with  a  definite  charge 
against  Christians_,  and  to  prove  that  they  have  broken  a 
law,  well  and  good ;  but  mere  demonstrations  and  out- 
cries are  to  be  disregarded,  and  information  given  for 
private  ends  must  be  discouraged  by  punishing  the  in- 
former. This  appeal  and  decision  appear,  then,  to  have 
arisen  out  of  a  refusal  on  the  part  of  Serenus  to  comply 
with  popular  clamours,  in  which  his  conduct  is  approved  by 
the  emperor  and  enjoined  on  his  successor  as  an  example. 
In  spite  of  the  ruling  that  some  definite  crime  must  be 
proved  in  the  case  of  Christians  (as  though  Christianity 
were  not  a  crime  in  itself),  it  is  not  probable  that  Hadrian 
meant  to  reverse  the  policy  of  Trajan  :  he  only  makes  it 
clear  that  the  onus  probandi  lies  on  the  accuser,  who  must 
bring  tangible  proofs  that  the  acts  of  the  accused  are 
those  of  a  Christian.  But  the  language  of  the  rescript  is 
doubtless  deliberately  vague,  and  must  have  left  con- 
siderable latitude  to  individual  governors. 

Reign  of  Antoninus  Pius,  A.D.  138-161. — The  procedure 
initiated  by  Hadrian  seems  to  have  been  continued.  The 
^serene  and  clement'  disposition  of  the  emperor  was  as  good 
a  safeguard  as  the  restless  scepticism  of  his  father.  ^Almost 
alone  of  all  emperors,'  says  one  of  his  biographers,  '  he 
lived  without  bloodshed  either  of  citizens  or  of  enemies.' 
No  official  declaration  of  Antoninus  Pius'  policy  is  extant; 
but  a  ^  Rescript  to  the  Confederation  of  Asia,'  written  and 
ascribed  to  him  by  a  Christian  of  the  next  generation, 
shows  by  its  exaggerated  tolerance  the  gratitude  with 
which  his  reign  was  remembered.  Nevertheless,  more 
names  of  martyrs  assigned  to  this  period  are  preserved 
than  is  the  case  in  any  earlier  reign  :  a  fact  which  must 
be  accounted  for  partly  by  the  growing  copiousness  of  the 
Christian  records,  and  partly  by  the  increased  bitterness 
of  popular  feeling.  Anti-Christian  agitation  was  generally 
due  to  some  public  calamity,  for  which  the  Pagan  popula- 
tions were  glad  to  hold  the  Church  responsible.  As 
Tertullian  said  fifty  years  later :  '  If  the  Tiber  rises  or 
the  Nile  refuses  to  rise,  if  ever  there  is  a  famine  or 
a  plague,  the  cry  at  once  is  heard,  ^'^The  Christians  to 
F 


82       CHURCH    HISTORY    TO   A.D.    825 

the  lions."'  And  the  reign  of  Antoninus  Pius  was  full  of 
calamities,  which  fell  most  heavily  on  Asia :  there  were 
famines,  floods,  and  destructive  fires  at  Rome,  Narbonne, 
Antioch,  Carthage ;  earthquakes  wrecked  the  towns  of 
Bithynia  and  the  Hellespont,  destroyed  Mitylene,  and 
inflicted  great  loss  on  Smyrna.  The  emperor  sought  to 
prevent  the  provincials  from  rising  to  avenge  these 
disasters  on  the  Christians  :  letters  were  sent  to  Larissa, 
Thessalonica,  Athens,  and  the  Greek  towns  of  Asia,  pro- 
hibiting violent  attacks  upon  the  Church.  It  is  perhaps 
possible  to  connect  the  letter  to  Athens  with  the  martyr- 
dom of  the  bishop  Publius,  which  is  assigned  to  this 
reign ;  while  the  death  of  Ptolemseus  and  Lucius  at 
Rome,  which  called  forth  Justin's  First  Apology  (p.  78);, 
reminds  us  that  the  old  law  remained  in  force,  and  that 
nothing  could  protect  Christians  from  prosecution  so  long 
as  the  procedure  was  legal  and  orderly. 

Polycarp :  his  life. — But  the  greatest  martyr  of  this 
reign,  Polycarp  of  Smyrna,  was  not  a  victim  to  orderly 
procedure.  He  was  born  about  the  year  a.d.  70,  'was 
taught  by  Apostles  and  lived  in  familiar  intercourse 
with  many  that  had  seen  Christ,'  and  was  appointed 
Bishop  of  Smyrna,  we  are  told,  '  by  Apostles,'  that 
is,  in  all  probability,  by  S.  John.  It  was  when  Poly- 
carp was  between  forty  and  fifty  that  Ignatius  passed 
through  Asia  on  his  way  to  die  at  Rome  (about  110). 
Ignatius  sent  a  letter  back  to  him  from  Troas ;  a 
letter  of  afi^ectionate  encouragement,  urging  Polycarp  to 
'stand  fast  as  an  anvil  that  is  smitten,'  and  asking 
him  to  continue  his  care  for  the  orphan  church 
of  Antioch,  and  to  see  that  representatives  are  sent 
from  Smyrna  and  other  cities  to  look  after  its  welfare. 
This  journey  of  Ignatius  was  also  the  occasion  of  the 
only  writing  of  Polycarp  which  has  been  preserved.  At 
Philippi,  Ignatius  charged  the  church  to  send  news  of 
him  to  Antioch.  Their  messenger  went  as  far  as  Smyrna, 
and  there  handed  over  his  letter  to  a  messenger  of 
Polycarp's  ;  Polycarp  then  sent  to  Philippi  an  answer  to 
the  letter,  in  which  they  had  asked  for  this  arrangement 
to  be  made,  and  also  the  letters  which  Ignatius  had 
written  to   Asiatic   churches   from  Smyrna  and  Troas. 


FROM   HADRIAN   TO   COMMODUS    83 

Polycarp's  brief  letter  has  a  double  interest^  as  the  sole 
writing-  of  Polycarp  and  the  last  monument  of  the 
Philippian  church ;  it  is  a  ^  pastoral  epistle/  full  of  the 
language  of  the  New  Testament :  he  rejoices  in  the  firmly 
rooted  and  fruitful  faith  of  the  Philippian  church,  and 
in  their  devotion  to  the  martyrs  ;  excuses  himself  for 
venturing  to  write  to  them,  which  only  their  request 
would  have  led  him  to  do,  since  such  as  he  '  cannot 
attain  to  the  wisdom  of  the  blessed  and  glorious  Paul/ 
their  teacher  by  word  and  epistle.  He  sends  exhorta- 
tions (especially  to  the  widows,  deacons,  and  presbyters), 
deplores  the  fall  of  a  presbyter  and  his  wife  into  avarice, 
warns  the  church  against  the  prevailing  types  of  error, 
and  urges  them  to  follow  the  high  example  of  such  as 
Ignatius,  Zosimus,  Rufus,  the  saints  of  their  own  church, 
S.  Paul  and  the  other  holy  Apostles.  Of  the  rest  of 
Polycarp's  life  very  little  is  known  ;  the  only  fact  of  real 
importance  is  that  late  in  life  (about  a.d.  154)  he  visited 
Rome.  There  he  was  able,  in  virtue  of  his  venerable 
age  and  the  testimony  which  he  could  bear  to  the 
apostolic  teaching,  to  make  a  great  impression  on  the 
Roman  Gnostics.  It  is  said  that  in  Rome  he  met 
Marcion,  the  founder  of  the  first  separatist  Church  ;  and 
that  when  Marcion  challenged  him,  ^  Dost  thou  recognise 
us,'  he  answered  sternly,  '  I  recognise  the  firstborn  of 
Satan.'  A  story  is  told  of  his  relations  with  the  Roman 
bishop  Anicetus  which  stands  in  pleasing  contrast  with 
the  hasty  imperiousness  of  the  next  pope,  Victor.  Poly- 
carp had  a  discussion  with  Anicetus  as  to  the  time  and 
manner  of  keeping  Easter  :  each  maintained  the  correct- 
ness of  his  own  view,  the  one  appealing  to  S.  John  and 
the  Churches  of  Asia  at  large,  the  other  to  the  unbroken 
custom  of  his  own  Church.  They  finally  agreed  to  differ 
amicably,  and  Anicetus  with  true  courtesy  allowed  Poly- 
carp to  take  his  place  and  celebrate  the  Eucharist  in  hig 
presence. 

MartyTdom  of  Polycarp.— A  few  years  afterwards,  on  the 
23rd  of  February  156,  Polycarp  sufi'ered  death  for  the 
faith.  The  circumstances  of  his  martyrdom  are  known 
from  a  letter  written  soon  afterwards  by  the  Smyrnaean 
Church  to  that  of  a  Phrygian  town,  Philomelium.  Smyrna, 


^) 


84       CHURCH    HISTORY   TO   A.D.    325 

which  had  always  been  conspicuous  for  its  zealous  main- 
tenance of  the  imperial  religion,  was  in  February  156 
holding  the  great  annual  festival  of  the  confederation 
of  Asia  (commune  Asice).  This  was  a  political  and  re- 
ligious body,  representative  of  the  chief  Asiatic  cities, 
and  charged  on  the  political  side  with  the  duty  of  keeping 
the  provincials  in  touch  with  the  emperor,  and  on  the  re- 
ligious side  with  maintaining',  through  its  president  or 
Asiarch,  the  cult  of  the  emperors.  The  Asiarch  Philip 
provided  games  of  exceptional  splendour :  the  religious 
imperialism  which  these  festivals  were  meant  to  foster  was 
running  high,  and  the  sect  which  ventured  to  hold  aloof 
from  the  universal  demonstrations  was  not  unnaturally 
attacked.  Eleven  Christians  had  been  recently  arrested  in 
Philadelphia :  they  were  brought  to  Smyrna,  tried,  and 
sentenced  to  be  thrown  to  wild  beasts  ;  and  the  Augustan 
games  were  enhanced  by  the  spectacle  which  their  suffer- 
ings afforded.  The  crowd  in  the  stadium  were  excited 
to  a  fury  of  murderous  appetite,  and  cried,  'Away  with 
the  atheists  !  hunt  for  Poly  carp  ! '  The  bishop  had  retired 
to  a  farm  in  the  country.  A  boy  betrayed  his  hiding- 
place  under  torture :  he  refused  to  escape,  but  asked  to 
have  an  hour's  respite  for  prayer ;  then,  after  '  remem- 
bering in  his  prayer  all  who  at  any  time  had  come  in 
his  way,  small  and  great,  high  and  low,  and  all  the 
universal  Church  throughout  the  world,'  he  was  taken 
into  the  city.  The  next  morning  he  was  brought  into 
the  stadium.  It  was  a  ^  high  Sabbath,'  and  many  Jews 
were  among  the  spectators,  and  joined  in  the  furious 
uproar  which  greeted  the  entry  of  the  bishop.  The 
officials  renewed  the  attempts  which  they  had  made  on 
the  previous  night  to  make  the  old  man  recant  and  offer 
incense  to  the  emperor.  '  Swear  by  the  genius  of  Caesar,' 
said  the  proconsul,  and  say,  'Away  with  the  atheists.' 
Polycarp  only  looked  round  upon  the  vast  heathen  crowd, 
and  looking  up  to  heaven  said,  'Away  with  the  atheists.' 
The  meaning  of  his  prayer  was  hidden  from  the  magis- 
trate, who  still  offered  terms.  '  Swear,  and  I  will  release 
you  :  blaspheme  Christ.'  Polycarp  gave  the  memorable 
answer,  '  Eighty  and  six  years  have  I  served  Him,  and 
He  has  done  me  no  wrong :  how  can  I  blaspheme  my 


FROM    HADRIAN  TO   COMMODUS    85 

King,  Who  saved  me?'  His  refusal  was  announced  to 
the  crowd,  who  clamoured,  Jews  and  Gentiles  alike,  that 
a  lion  should  be  let  loose  upon  him  ;  but  the  games  were 
over,  and  the  Asiarch  would  not  have  them  renewed. 
The  populace  then  took  the  law  into  their  own  hands, 
gathered  a  pile  of  wood  from  the  neighbouring  shops  and 
baths,  and  seizing  Polycarp,  bound  him  unresisting  to 
the  stake.  The  improvised  pyre  blazed  up  in  a  great 
arch  of  flame,  scarcely  touching  the  aged  martyr,  when 
a  kindly  sword-thrust  soon  released  him  from  torture. 
At  the  urgent  request  of  the  Jews,  to  whom  the 
Smyrntjean  letter  ascribes  fanatic  zeal  against  the  Church, 
the  body  was  left  to  be  burned ;  the  ashes,  '  more  precious 
than  jewels,'  were  gathered  up  by  Christian  hands  and 
laid  in  ^a  fitting  place  of  rest.'  With  this  heroic  martyr- 
dom the  persecution  of  Antoninus  Pius  appears  to  have 
come  to  an  end. 

Reign  of  Marcus  Aurelius,  tlie  philosopher-king,  A.D.  161- 
180.— Under  the  next  emperor,  Marcus  Aurelius,  the  warfare 
of  the  Church  assumed  a  different  aspect.  Marcus  was 
indeed,  in  matters  of  principle,  a  diligent  imitator  of  his 
father's  character.  'Act  always,'  he  wrote,  for  his  own 
guidance,  '  as  a  pupil  of  Antoninus  should  :  remember 
his  thoroughness  in  obeying  the  law  of  reason ;  his 
equable,  pure,  serene,  and  gentle  mind,  his  penetrating 
insight  into  character,  his  scorn  of  ostentation.  He 
was  never  exacting  or  suspicious  :  content  with  great 
plainness  in  food,  in  furniture,  in  service,  he  was  always 
industrious,  patient,  and  perfect  in  self-control.'  There 
was  much  in  Marcus  Aurelius  that  faithfully  reproduced 
the  beauties  of  his  father's  character ;  austere  in  life, 
diligent  in  consideration  for  others,  strict  and  exact  in 
official  duty,  he  devoted  the  whole  of  his  leisure  to  the 
study  of  great  subjects,  to  the  problems  of  life  and  duty, 
the  examination  of  self,  the  discipline  of  emotion,  and 
the  concentration  of  effort  on  union  with  God.  Much 
of  his  time  was  spent  on  the  dreary  plains  of  Bohemia 
and  Hungary,  in  campaigns  against  the  barbarous  in- 
vaders who,  at  that  time,  were  constantly  pushing 
forward  across  the  north-eastern  frontiers ;  it  was  then 
that  he  wrote  the  book  by  which  we  know  him,  '^the 


86       CHURCH    HISTORY    TO    A.D.    325 

most  human  book  ever  written^'  as  Renan  called  it.  The 
Meditations  of  Marcus  Aurelius  reveal  the  philosopher-king 
as  a  liberal  Stoic :  liberal  in  his  appreciation  of  many 
types  of  thought^  but  most  deeply  rooted  in  the  belief 
that  the  world  is  indwelt  by  reason,  and  that  man's 
business  is  to  live  a  life  of  conformity  to  Nature,  that  is, 
to  the  reason  which  governs  the  system  of  which  he  is 
a  member.  This  belief  is  the  essence  of  Stoicism,  and 
It  was  from  the  writings  of  the  Stoic  Epictetus  that 
Marcus  Aurelius  drew  much  of  his  inspiration  in  de- 
veloping it  into  a  religion  of  duty. 

Marcus'  motives  for  persecution. — Why,  with  such  a 
religion,  did  the  emperor  become  a  persecutor  of  the 
body  whose  ideal  was  so  closely  allied  to  his  own  ?  A 
partial  answer  would  be  that  Marcus  Aurelius  was 
strictly  faithful  to  his  teachers,  who  had  always  looked 
down  on  the  '  Galileans ' ;  devotees  of  Nature,  they  had 
an  intense  dislike  for  the  supernaturalism  of  Christian 
teaching.  But  his  opposition  to  the  Church  was  not 
that  of  a  teacher  to  false  doctrine  :  he  scarcely  mentions 
the  Christians  in  his  Meditations.  Once,  when  speaking 
of  the  duty  of  keeping  oneself  prepared  for  death,  he 
alludes  with  scorn  to  the  triumph  with  which  the  martyrs 
went  to  meet  it :  one  should  be  ready,  as  the  result  of 
deliberate  j  udgment,  and  die  with  dignity,  not '  for  mere 
obstinacy  like  the  Christians,'  nor  with  a  '  melodramatic' 
exit.  Marcus  makes  no  allusion  to  the  Christian  creed. 
To  explain  the  persecutions,  then,  we  must  look  at  his 
practical  policy.  Here  again,  however,  the  same  diffi- 
culty meets  us.  The  whole  tendency  of  legislation  in 
this  reign  is  towards  humanity  and  equal  justice.  The 
emperor's  private  fortune  as  well  as  the  public  money 
was  devoted  to  education  and  to  well-considered  charity  ; 
the  condition  of  slaves,  to  whom  the  Stoicism  of  Roman 
lawyers  had  already  begun  to  allow  a  share  in  the 
common  rights  of  man,  was  now  improved,  as  was  also 
that  of  wards  and  minors ;  the  rigours  of  criminal  law 
were  diminished,  and  even  the  degrading  horrors  of  the 
gladiatorial  shows  would  have  been  reformed  away,  had 
not  public  opinion  risen  against  that  curtailment  of 
popular  privilege.     What  counteracting  cause  prevented 


FROM    HADRIAN  TO   COMMODUS    87 

the  application  of  these  liberal  principles  to  the  Christian 
Church?  First,  the  existing  law  on  this  subject  was  the 
result  of  deliberate  action  by  emperors  whom  Marcus 
Aurelius  respected  :  to  reverse  it  would  have  been  diffi- 
cult for  one  who,  like  him,  was  scrupulously  conservative 
in  every  matter  which  a  Roman  could  hold  important. 
And  further,  in  respect  of  religious  observances,  Marcus 
Aurelius  was  especially  tenacious  of  the  old  tradition, 
and  while  ready  to  go  beyond  them  in  sanctioning  new 
forms  of  worship,  he  was  a  natural  enemy  to  the  only  faith 
which  could  not  tolerate  the  toleration  of  Roman  poly- 
theism. Thus  it  was  that  the  ruler  who  surrounded 
himself  with  thinkers  quite  detached  from  the  accepted 
forms  of  Paganism,  who  was  himself  a  flamen  of  the 
Salii,  and  permitted  himself  to  take  part  in  the  puerili- 
ties invented  by  the  impostor  Alexander,  was  also  re- 
sponsible for  the  severest  period  of  suffering  through 
which  the  Church  had  yet  been  made  to  pass.  That  the 
author  of  the  Meditations  was  also  the  sternest  of  per- 
secutors is  almost  a  paradox ;  and  if  by  '  persecution  ' 
were  meant  the  forcible  suppression  of  opinions,  it  would 
prove  him  tainted  with  a  hateful  insincerity.  But  Marcus 
Aurelius,  who  taught  that  compulsion  made  men  'irra- 
tional slaves  and  hypocrites,'  did  not  make  war  on 
opinions :  he  oppressed  a  society  which  seemed  to  him, 
as  to  his  predecessors,  to  menace  the  unity  and  the  moral 
well-being  of  the  Roman  empire. 

Persecutions  in  Rome,  Asia,  and  Gaul. — 

(1)  In  Rome  the  apologist  Justin  Martyr,  denounced, 
as  he  had  expected  (p.  72),  by  the  philosopher  Crescens 
(168),  was  brought  before  the  city  prefect,  Junius  Rus- 
ticus.  The  conflict  between  him  and  Crescens  had  been 
one  of  opinions  :  the  crime  with  which  he,  and  others 
with  him,  were  charged,  had  nothing  to  do  with  opinions. 
The  prefect  called  on  him  not  to  recant,  but  to  perform 
the  religious  duty  of  a  citizen,  to  offer  incense.  He  and 
his  companions  refused,  and  were  beheaded. 

(2)  In  Asia  Minor,  where  the  progress  and  the  suffer- 
ings of  the  Church  had  always  been  considerable, 
'  new  edicts '  were  promulgated,  probably  about  the 
year    176,   in    pursuance    of    which    'the    people    who 


88       CHURCH   HISTORY   TO   A.D.    325 

fear  God  were  persecuted  all  over  Asia.  Shameless 
informers^  men  greedy  for  gain,  took  occasion  from  these 
ordinances  to  practise  open  brigandage,  despoiling,  night 
and  day,  men  guilty  of  no  crime.'  These  sentences  are 
quoted  by  the  historian  Eusebius  from  an  apology  pre- 
sented to  Marcus  Aurelius  by  Melito,  bishop  of  Sardis 
(175).  Melito  did  not  believe,  or  affected  not  to  believe, 
that  the  emperor  was  responsible  for  what  was  happening. 
He  appealed  for  a  fair  examination,  protesting  that 
measures  were  being  taken  which  would  not  be  used 
against  a  savage  enemy  in  war.  His  arguments  (only  a 
few  fragments  survive)  were  singularly  bold :  he  pre- 
sented the  Christian  religion  as  coeval  with  the  empire, 
the  contemporary  at  least  of  the  highest  flood-tide  of 
Roman  prosperity  ;  and  called  on  the  emperor  to  abstain 
from  a  ferocity  of  which  only  a  Nero  and  a  Domitian 
were  capable.  This  appeal  is  the  only  surviving  trace  of 
the  Asiatic  persecution.  But  it  is  known  that  Apollinaris, 
bishop  of  Hierapolis,  and  Miltiades  made  similar  efforts. 
The  former  relied  on  an  episode  which  was  believed, 
thirty  years  afterwards,  to  have  strongly  affected  the 
emperor  in  favour  of  the  Church.  In  a  campaign  against 
theQuadi  in  164,  Marcus  Aurelius  and  the  twelfth  legion 
were  cut  off  from  their  water-supply,  and  after  suffering 
agonies  of  thirst  were  suddenly  relieved  by  a  violent 
storm  of  thunder  and  rain.  The  oflScial  records  saw  in 
this  an  answer  to  the  intercession  of  the  emperor,  and 
coins  bearing  an  image  of  Jupiter  Pluvius  were  struck 
in  honour  of  the  event.  Others  claimed  as  their  de- 
liverer one  Arnuphis,  an  Egyptian  magician  who  was 
among  the  camp-followers.  The  Christian  story  referred 
the  miracle  to  the  prayers  of  Christian  soldiers  in  the 
legion.  This  was  the  version  of  the  affair  to  which 
Apollinaris  appealed.  That  the  appeal  was,  in  fact,  use- 
less is  shown  by  the  undiminished  severity  of  the  per- 
secution. 

(3)  In  Gaul  the  hand  of  the  enemy  fell  with  cruel 
force  on  the  churches  of  Lugdunum  (Lyon)  and  Vienna, 
the  former  situated  at  the  junction  of  the  Rhone  and 
the  Saone,  the  latter  on  the  left  bank  of  the  Rhone, 
a  few  miles  lower  down.     The  south  of  Gaul  had  long 


FROM    HADRIAN  TO   COMMODUS    89 

been  closely  linked  with  the  trading  cities  of  the  Asiatic 
sea-board,  and  early  in  the  second  century  the  current 
of  trade  and  immigration  from  Smyrna  had  carried 
Christianity  to  the  commercial  cities  of  the  Rhone  valley. 
In  the  seventeenth  year  of  Marcus  Aurelius  (177)  a  wave 
of  anti-Christian  agitation  swept  over  the  district.  The 
old  calumnies  were  propagated  and  believed.  Every  mis- 
fortune was  attributed  to  the  hated  class ;  men  shut  their 
doors  against  the  Christians,  drove  them  out  of  the 
public  baths,  forbade  them  to  buy  or  sell  in  the  markets, 
stoned  and  hooted  them  in  the  streets.  At  Lugdunum 
the  public  disorder  was  so  great,  that  in  order  to  allay 
it  a  number  of  the  faithful  were  arrested,  in  spite  of 
the  protests  of  one  Vettius  Epagathus,  a  Christian  of 
high  rank.  On  the  arrival  of  the  imperial  legate, 
who  had  been  in  another  part  of  the  province,  the 
accused  were  examined  by  torture.  The  number  of 
sufferers  was  daily  increased :  the  inquisition  spread  to 
Vienna,  and  soon  the  majority  of  Christians  in  both 
towns  were  in  prison.  Among  them  the  aged  Pothinus, 
bishop  of  Lugdunum ;  Sanctus,  a  deacon  of  Vienna ; 
Maturus,  '  a  neophyte,  but  a  noble  warrior ' ;  Attains,  a 
native  of  Pergamos ;  Blandina,  a  young  slave-girl ;  and 
Ponticus,  a  boy  of  fifteen,  have  the  place  of  honour  in 
the  story  which  their  churches  sent  to  those  of  Asia  and 
Phrygia.  This  noble  letter,  worthy  to  be  ranked  with 
that  which  the  Smyrnaeans  had  written  twenty  years 
before,  tells  how  in  two  cases  the  terrors  of  torture  gained 
their  end  ;  some  ten  Christians  proved  too  weak  to  bear 
them,  and  renounced  the  faith ;  while  certain  heathen 
slaves  were  forced  to  confess  that  their  Christian  masters 
were  guilty  of  the  foul  charges  popularly  brought  against 
them. 

The  result  was  a  dreadful  increase  of  popular  fury  and 
official  cruelty.  But  the  confessors,  confined  in  filthy 
dungeons  and  tortured  with  every  refinement  of  brutality, 
made  their  prison  a  colony  of  Churchmen.  They  so  far 
maintained  their  unity  with  the  Church  at  large  as  to  inter- 
vene by  letters  as  peacemakers  in  the  controversies  of  the 
time ;  and  we  are  told  of  one  striking  instance  of  the 
charity  which  the  sharing  of  a  common  burden  can  teach. 


90      CHURCH    HISTORY   TO   A.D.    326 

One  Aljibiades  had  been  used  to  live  a  life  of  rigorous  ab- 
stinencCj  and  attempted  at  first  to  adhere  in  prison  to  his 
ordinary  rule ;  but  when  he  found  out  what  a  reflection 
his  austerities  seemed  to  cast  on  his  companions,  he 
allowed  himself  to  eat  without  scruple,  giving  God  thanks. 
Imprisonment  and  torture  were  soon  fatal  to  the  old 
bishop  Pothinus.  '  Who  is  the  Christian  God  ? '  he  was 
asked  ;  and  for  the  answer,  ^  Thou  shalt  learn  if  thou  art 
worthy,'  he  was  so  cruelly  handled  that  in  two  days  he 
died.  After  a  while  the  legate  gave  a  special  spectacle 
in  the  amphitheatre  :  confessors  and  apostates  alike  were 
led  in,  the  former  triumphant,  the  latter  hopeless. 
Sanctus  and  Maturus  were  put  to  death  after  a  day 
of  torments,  Attalus  paraded  with  a  placard,  ^  Hie  est 
Attains  Christianus,'  Blandina  offered  to  wild  beasts,  who 
refused  to  touch  her. 

Meanwhile  a  request  had  been  sent  to  Rome  for 
the  emperor's  advice.  The  response  was  that  release 
should  be  oftered  as  the  reward  of  recantation,  and 
that  the  obstinate  should  be  put  to  death.  The  1st 
of  August  offered  a  fit  occasion  for  a  great  display. 
On  that  day  the  Concilium  Galliarum  celebrated  with 
magnificent  ceremonies  the  anniversary  of  the  conse- 
cration of  the  local  altar  of  Rome  and  Augustus. 
Before  an  enormous  concourse  the  victims  were  brought 
in ;  some  few  it  appears  were  reprieved  ;  of  the  rest, 
those  who  were  Roman  citizens  were  beheaded,  the 
rest  were  scourged,  seated  on  a  red-hot  chair,  tossed  by 
bulls,  or  mangled  by  wild  animals.  The  girl  Blandina, 
forced  to  witness  the  sufferings  of  the  rest,  was  kept 
with  the  young  Ponticus  to  the  last ;  the  boy  was  first 
despatched,  and  then  Blandina, '  rejoicing  and  triumphing 
in  her  departure,  went  to  join  her  fellows.'  The  conflict 
which  ended  with  her  death  was  in  many  ways  unique. 
The  number  of  actual  martyrs  was  large,  the  denials 
were  comparatively  iew,  and  the  struggle  was  so  long 
continued  that  many  of  the  lapsed  had  time  to  be  shamed 
into  recovery  of  their  courage  ;  while  the  temper  of  the 
confessors,  constant  beyond  belief,  was  wholly  free  from 
that  arrogance  which  cast  such  a  cloud  on  some  of  the 
most  heroic  martyrdoms  of  the  succeeding  century. 


FROM    HADRIAN  TO   COMMODUS    91 

Reign  of  Commodus,  A.D.  180-192. — In  180  Marcus 
Aurelius  died.  The  reign  of  his  son  Commodus  offers 
at  all  points  a  strong  contrast  to  that  of  Marcus. 
Commodus  was  one  of  the  worst  of  emperors,  a  man 
of  debauched  habits,  an  irrational  despot.  His  father's 
leisure  had  given  the  Meditations  to  the  world :  that 
of  the  son  was  passed  in  fighting  as  a  gladiator  in 
the  arena.  And  yet  the  paradox  of  destiny  which  made 
Marcus  Aurelius  a  persecutor  made  Commodus  a  bene- 
factor of  the  Church.  There  were  indeed  martyrdoms 
in  his  reign  ;  the  proto-martyrs  of  Africa  suffered  at  Ma- 
daura,  in  Numidia,  in  180,  and  on  the  16th  of  August  in 
the  same  year  twelve  Christians  were  executed  at  Scillium 
in  the  same  district.  These  acts  of  persecution  may,  of 
course,  be  regarded  as  due  to  the  policy  of  Marcus ;  but 
we  hear  of  similar  events  in  Asia  about  184,  and  about 
the  same  time  a  Roman  senator  called  ApoUonius,  after  a 
fruitless  defence  before  the  senate,  was  beheaded.  Yet 
the  informer  in  this  case  is  said  to  have  perished  also ; 
and  it  is  certain  that  from  this  time  onwards  the  position 
of  the  Church  began  to  improve.  More  than  one  Christian 
held  office  in  the  imperial  household,  and  Marcia,  the 
emperor's  mistress,  interested  herself  on  behalf  of  the 
Church.  A  slave  Callistus,  who  afterwards  became 
bishop  of  Rome,  was  among  those  who  profited  by  this 
strange  but  powerful  support.  About  the  year  190, 
Marcia  is  said  to  have  summoned  the  pope  Victor  to 
her  presence  and  obtained  from  him  the  names  of  those 
confessors  who  had  been  condemned  to  work  in  the 
Sardinian  mines.  A  general  amnesty  was  announced, 
and  Callistus,  who  had  been  sentenced  a  year  or  two 
before,  was  among  those  who  were  liberated. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  historian  Eusebius  is 
right  in  treating  the  reign  of  Commodus  as  the  beginning 
of  a  new  epoch  for  the  Church.  Persecution  was  indeed 
not  to  end  till  more  than  a  century  later,  but  it  ceased 
now  to  be  the  normal  relation  between  Church  and 
Empire.  In  the  succeeding  reigns  we  find  no  longer  a 
continuous  state  of  war,  but  a  series  of  definite  outbreaks, 
begun  and  terminated  by  overt  acts  of  the  imperial  power, 
and  separated  from  each  other  by  long  intervals  of  un- 
broken peace. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE    CHURCHES    OF    BOMB    AND    ALEXANDRIA 

1.  The  Church  of  Rome. — From  the  beginning  of  Chris- 
tianity down  to  the  division  of  the  empire  by  Diocletian 
(a.d.  284),  Rome  was  the  capital  of  the  civilised  world. 
This  political  fact  was  the  chief  cause  of  the  importance 
which  the  Roman  Church  attained  in  the  ante-Nicene 
period.  In  the  fourth  and  fifth  centuries,  when  the  tide 
of  barbarian  invasion  was  breaking  up  the  western  em- 
pire, a  series  of  powerful  popes  succeeded  in  making 
good  a  claim  to  supreme  ecclesiastical  jurisdiction ; 
among  these  were  Leo  the  Great  (440-461)  and  Gregory 
the  Great  (590-604),  who  were  the  creators  of  the  modern 
Papacy.  But  this  development  falls  outside  our  period. 
The  ante-Nicene  bishops  of  Rome  did  in  some  cases 
claim  an  authority  proportionate  to  the  dignity  of  the 
imperial  city,  but  those  claims  were  only  faint  premoni- 
tions of  the  later  papalism. 

The  introduction  of  Christianity  into  Rome  was  not 
the  work  of  any  of  the  Apostles  :  S.  Paul  made  it  a  rule 
not  to  build  on  another  man's  foundation  (Rom.  xv.  20), 
and  when  he  wrote  to  the  Romans  in  a.d.  56,  there 
already  existed  a  Christian  community  consisting  lai-gely 
of  Gentiles,  with  a  minority  of  Jewish  members.  How 
this  society  came  into  existence  it  is  hard  to  say ;  but 
from  the  number  of  men  and  women  in  Rome  whom 
S.  Paul  salutes  as  old  friends,  it  is  most  natural  to  infer 
that  converts  from  the  Pauline  churches  of  Greece  and 
Asia  had  at  an  early  date  been  brought  to  Rome  by  the 
tide  of  commerce.^     By  the  year  a.d.  61  the  Church  had 

^  See  The  Epistle  to  the  Romans,  ed.  Sanday  and  Headlam, 
pp.  xxv-xxviii. 
92 


CHURCHES  OF  ROME  AND  ALEXANDRIA  93 

found  its  way  into  high  places  (Phil.  iv.  22)^  and  when 
the  Neronian  persecution  broke  out  in  64,  it  numbered, 
according  to  Tacitus,  an  'immense  multitude'  of 
members. 

Epistle  of  Clement,  A.D.  96.— The  sufferings  of  the  Roman 
church  under  Nero  and  Domitian  have  been  mentioned  else- 
where (pp.  37  ff.,  41  ff.).  At  the  end  of  Domitian's  reign, 
the  Roman  bishop  Clement  wrote  in  the  name  of  the  Church 
to  the  Christians  of  Corinth,  where  certain  presbyters  had 
been  unreasonably  deposed  from  office.  Clement  reminds 
the  Corinthians  that  the  Apostles  had  everywhere  ap- 
pointed their  *  first-fruits '  to  be  bishops  and  deacons,  and 
had  afterwards  'provided  a  continuance,  that  if  these 
should  fall  asleep,  other  approved  men  should  succeed  to 
their  ministration' ;  a  ministerial  commission  so  received 
cannot  be  disregarded  without  sin.  The  sedition  in  their 
church  is  due  to  party-spirit;  and  party-spirit  makes  Chris- 
tian brotherhood  impossible.  This  letter,  with  its  unique 
testimony  to  primitive  Church  order,  had  a  wide  circula- 
tion in  the  early  centuries  :  Dionysius  of  Corinth,  writing 
to  Soter  of  Rome  about  a.d.  166,  speaks  of  its  being  read 
in  his  church  at  Sunday  services ;  and  in  the  fourth 
century,  though  it  was  not  reckoned  a  canonical  book, 
this  public  use  of  it  was  still  quite  common.  This  inter- 
vention of  the  Roman  church  in  the  affairs  of  Corinth 
did  not  imply  any  claim  to  jurisdiction ;  it  exemplified 
rather  the  sense  of  unity  and  common  interests  in  the 
Church  which  made  the  difficulties  of  one  society  a 
matter  of  concern  to  all ;  and  it  is  closely  parallel  to  the 
series  of  '  catholic  letters '  in  which  Dionysius  of  Corinth, 
sixty  years  afterwards,  gave  advice  to  the  churches  of 
Athens,  Lacedaemon,  and  the  Cretan  cities. 

That  the  Roman  church  was  highly  respected  by  dis- 
tant communities  is  shown  by  the  language  of  Ignatius, 
who  wrote  from  Smyrna,  about  a.d.  110  (p.  43),  'to  the 
Church  that  has  the  presidency  in  the  country  of  the 
region  of  the  Romans,  a  Church  worthy  of  God .  .  .  which 
has  the  presidency  of  love,  walking  in  the  law  of  Christ.' 
Ignatius  also  suggests  that  some  of  the  Roman  Christians 
had  enough  secular  influence  to  prevent  the  execution  of 
his  sentence  :  '  I  dread  your  very  love,  lest  it  do  me  an 


94      CHURCH   HISTORY   TO   A.D.    326 

injury,  for  it  is  easy  for  you  to  do  what  ye  will' ;  and  he 
asks  them  not  to  do  him  this  'unseasonable  kindness.' 

The  Shepherd  of  Hermas. — About  a.d.  140,  in  the  epis- 
copate of  Pius,  Hermas  the  bishop's  brother  wrote  a  book 
called  the  Shepherd,  which  contains  vivid  pictures  of  the 
ideal  and  the  real  Church.  In  the  five  visions  with  which 
the  book  begins,  the  Church  appears  to  him  as  an  aged 
woman,  enthroned  on  a  chair  covered  with  white  wool ; 
she  is  venerable,  because  '^she  was  created  first  of  all 
things,  and  for  her  sake  the  world  was  made.'  She 
appears  in  order  to  quicken  Hermas'  conscience  ;  and  she 
shows  him  a  tower  which  six  angels  are  building  :  myriads 
of  men  supply  them  with  stones,  some  of  which  are 
squared  and  fit  for  use,  while  others  are  round  or  rough 
or  cracked,  and  these  the  angels  cast  away  ;  some  again 
are  set  in  the  tower,  but  soon  fall  away. 

The  five  visions  are  followed  by  twelve  commandments  : 
these  are  given  to  Hermas  by  '  a  man  of  glorious  aspect, 
dressed  like  a  shepherd';  they  enjoin  upon  him  faith, 
truthfulness,  purity,  patience,  prayerfulness,  the  fear  of 
God,  and  the  discerning  of  true  prophecy.  The  Shep- 
herd, who  is  the  '^  angel  of  repentance,'  then  interprets  to 
Hermas  a  series  of  ten  symbolic  visions  or  parables,  which 
all  have  the  same  motive  as  the  first  vision  ;  the  three 
characters  of  the  saint,  the  conventional  Christian  and 
the  wilful  sinner  are  contrasted  in  varied  and  graphic  re- 
presentations. The  whole  book  is  a  sermon  for  the  times; 
its  visions  are  intended  to  portray  the  actual  state  of  the 
Roman  Church  in  the  light  of  God's  judgment,  and  the 
keynote  of  the  whole  is  Repentance.  If  the  Church  has 
many  worthy  members,  and  many  more  who  are  faithful 
in  part,  yet  in  various  ways  the  responsibilities  of  the 
baptized  are  being  forgotten  :  the  pleasures  of  the  world 
and  the  flesh  are  lowering  men's  ideals,  love  of  money  is 
teaching  men  disrespect  for  the  poor,  the  character  of 
'  Facing-both-ways '  is  becoming  common ;  ambition, 
disobedience,  and  even  dishonesty  are  charged  against 
the  presbyters  and  deacons ;  and  under  the  stress  of 
persecution.  Christians  are  guilty  of  various  degrees  of 
disloyalty.  Although  Hermas  probably  wrote  when 
Gnostic  teachers  were  active  in  Rome,  he  was  so  con- 


CHURCHES  OF  ROME  AND  ALEXANDRIA   95 

cerned  with  the  moral  situation  that  this  intellectual 
danger  called  from  him  only  a  passing  allusion  to  '  hypo- 
crites and  sowers  of  strange  doctrines.'  His  interest  was 
disciplinary ;  and  he  enforced  three  principles  of  dis- 
cipline :  (1)  sins  committed  after  baptism  may  be  purged 
by  repentance ;  (2)  no  sin  is  too  bad  for  absolution, 
although  some  sins  make  repentance  very  difficult; 
(3)  restoration  after  baptism  can  only  be  granted  once. 
Hermas  does  not  lay  these  rules  down  as  laws  of  the 
Church,  nor  does  he  say  that  a  second  relapse  must 
exclude  a  man  from  all  hope ;  but  he  is  maintaining  a 
high  ideal,  and  will  not  encourage  slackness  by  preaching 
an  easy  Gospel. 

Christian  travellers  in  Rome.— The  Epistle  to  Diognetus 
(a  beautiful  fragment  of  an  anonymous  apology)  says,  that 
to  the  Christians  ^  every  foreign  country  is  their  father- 
land, and  every  fatherland  a  foreign  country.'  Perhaps 
this  sense  of  homeless  cosmopolitanism  was  in  part  the 
cause  of  the  remarkable  amount  of  travelling  which  early 
Church  history  records.  There  is  scarcely  one  of  the 
prominent  men  of  the  second  and  third  centuries  who  does 
not  help  to  illustrate  the  mobility  of  men  and  ideas.  Some 
of  these,  like  Melito  of  Sardis,  who  moved  towards  Meso- 
potamia and  visited  the  holy  places  of  Palestine,  confined 
themselves  to  the  East ;  but  most  of  them  were  found  at 
some  time  in  Rome,  the  centre  of  the  world's  traffic.  By 
the  middle  of  the  second  century  Cerdon  Marcion  and 
Valentinus  had  brought  their  strange  doctrines  there,  and 
Justin,  moving  from  Ephesus,  had  opposed  them.  Poly- 
carp  came  to  Rome  as  a  very  old  man  about  150,  Hegesippus 
came  from  Palestine  in  the  same  period,  and  Avircius 
Marcellus,  bishop  of  Hieropolis  in  Phrygia,  wrote  for 
himself  an  epitaph  in  which  his  journey  to  Italy  is 
mentioned  :  after  going  as  far  eastward  as  Nisibis  in 
Mesopotamia,  he  went  west,  '  to  see  the  great  king  and 
the  queen  with  her  golden  robe  and  sandals,'  and  there 
he  saw  the  people  that  has  the  bright  seal  {i.e.  baptism). 

The  appeal  to  apostolic  Churclies. — This  current  of  com- 
munication between  distant  Churches  was  used  in  a  special 
way  on  behalf  of  the  apostolic  traditions  against  heresy. 
Thus  Hegesippus  assured  himself  by  his  travels  that  the 


96      CHURCH    HISTORY   TO   A.D.    326 

standard  of  teaching  was  everywhere  faithful  to  the  '  Law, 
the  Prophets,  and  the  Lord.'  Reference  was  especially 
made  to  those  Churches  which  had  been  founded  by 
Apostles.  Tertullian  in  a.d.  197  urg-ed  the  agreement  of 
all  these  Churches  as  a  guarantee  of  their  loyalty  to  pri- 
mitive doctrine  :  Corinth  and  Philippi  were  accessible  to 
Greeks,  Ephesus  to  Asiatics,  'and  if  you  are  near  Italy  you 
have  Rome,  whence  also  we  of  Carthage  have  an  authority 
near  at  hand.'  Exactly  the  same  appeal  had  been  made 
by  Irenseus  twenty  years  before  against  Gnosticism  :  the 
security  given  by  the  succession  of  bishops  going  back  to 
the  Apostles  could  be  illustrated,  he  said,  from  many 
Churches ;  but  it  was  easier  to  choose  one  great  example, 
and  therefore  he  chose  the  Roman  Church — '  for  to  this 
Church,  on  account  of  its  stronger  pre-eminence,  it  is 
necessary  that  every  Church  should  resort,  that  is,  the 
faithful  from  all  parts.'  Irenaeus  then  enumerates  the 
twelve  bishops  from  Linus,  whom  the  Apostles  appointed, 
to  his  own  contemporary  Eleutherus  (a.d.  177-192),  as 
witnesses  to  the  continuity  of  the  true  tradition  at  Rome. 
It  is  noteworthy  that  Irenaeus  refers  the  foundation  of 
Roman  Christianity  to  S.  Peter  and  S.  Paul,  that  he 
reckons  the  succession  of  bishops  from  the  Apostles  and 
not  from  S.  Peter  alone,  and  that  he  numbers  them  in 
such  a  way  as  to  show  plainly  that  he  did  not  reckon 
S.  Peter  as  the  first  Roman  bishop. 

Victor  and  the  Paschal  controversy. — Irenfeus  also 
appears  in  another  incident  which  throws  some  light 
on  the  kind  and  limits  of  Roman  influence  at  the  end 
of  the  second  century.  When  Polycarp  visited  Rome 
about  A.D.  150,  the  difference  between  the  Asiatic  and 
the  Western  modes  of  fixing  and  keeping  Easter  did 
not  prevent  Anicetus  from  showing  him  the  greatest 
courtesy  (p.  83).  But  the  Roman  bishop  Victor  (A.D. 
192-199)  took  a  very  different  line.  It  is  probable  that 
under  Soter,  Victor's  immediate  predecessor,  the  good 
relations  existing  between  the  Asiatics  resident  in  Rome 
and  the  Roman  church  had  been  disturbed,  and  the 
custom  of  'sending  the  Eucharist'  to  them  had  been 
discontinued.  Victor  determined  to  end  the  dispute,  and 
wrote  to  the  bishops  of  Asia  requesting  them  to  hold 


CHURCHES  OF  ROME  AND  ALEXANDRIA  97 

synods  to  this  end.  Similar  synods  in  Rome  and  other 
centres  outside  Asia  Minor  decided  that  Easter  must  be 
kept  on  a  Sunday.  Victor  went  on  to  desire  the  Asiatics 
to  reach  the  same  decision^  and  on  their  refusal  declared 
them  cut  off  from  communion.  This  assumption  and 
hasty  use  of  authority  called  forth  protests  from  many 
bishops,  and  Irenaeus,  who  was  among  the  remonstrants, 
wrote  not  to  Victor  only,  but  to  many  other  bishops. 
Polycrates  of  Ephesus,  the  direct  object  of  Victor's 
attack,  refused  wholly  to  be  intimidated,  and  reminded 
Victor  that  Rome  was  not  the  only  Church  which 
possessed  great  apostolic  traditions. 

Hippolytus  and,  Callistus. — Victor  was  the  first  Roman 
bishop  to  bear  a  Latin  name.  The  Christian  literature 
of  Rome  down  to  Hippolytus  was  all  in  Greek,  and  the 
works  of  Hippolytus  were  entirely  written  in  that 
language.  Hippolytus'  activity  extended  over  the  reign 
of  four  bishops— Zephyrinus  (199-217),  Callistus  (217- 
222),  Urbanus  (222-230),  and  Pontianus  (230-235).  A 
statue  erected  to  his  memory  not  long  after  his  death 
was  unearthed  at  Rome  in  1551,  and  on  the  chair  in 
which  the  figure  is  seated  appears  a  long  list  of  his 
works  ;  the  fact  that  little  of  his  writings  survives  except 
his  Refutation  of  all  Heresies  and  his  Commentary  on 
Daniel,  is  due  to  the  peculiar  part  which  he  took  in  the 
controversies  of  his  time.  Two  questions,  one  of  doctrine 
and  one  of  discipline,  were  then  disturbing  the  Roman 
church.  Praxeas,  an  Asiatic,  and  Noetus  were  then 
popularising  in  Rome  a  type  of  theology  which  dwelt 
strongly  on  the  unique  sovereignty  (monarchia)  of  God, 
and  asserted  that  the  Son  and  the  Holy  Spirit  were 
different  modes  or  aspects  under  which  God  was  at 
difi'erent  epochs  manifested.  These  modalist  Monarch- 
ians,  as  they  were  called,  would  not  accept  a  doctrine  of 
the  Trinity  in  which  the  Three  Persons  were  regarded 
as  eternally  distinct,  and  they  were  specially  opposed 
to  the  teaching  which  spoke  of  the  Son  as  'subordinate' 
to  the  Father.  To  their  type  of  Monarchian  doctrine 
the  popes  Zephyrinus  and  Callistus  were  inclined  : 
they  appear  to  have  been  administrators  rather  than 
thinkers,  and  the  best  thought  of  the  time,  as  repre- 
G 


98      CHURCH   HISTORY   TO   A.D.    325 

sented  in  the  West  by  Hippolytus  and  TertuUian,  was 
against  them. 

In  discipline,  Hippolytus  strongly  opposed  the  policy  of 
Callistus.  The  question  which  Hermas  had  foreshadowed 
had  now  become  serious :  Could  absolution  be  rightly 
granted  for  any  sin,  however  grave?  and  under  what 
conditions  might  apostates  or  excommunicate  persons  be 
restored  to  communion?  The  Roman  church  had  re- 
jected the  rigid  Montanist  answer  to  these  questions, 
and  Hippolytus  charged  Callistus  with  improper  laxity 
in  dealing  with  them.  His  attack  on  the  bishop  was 
vehemently  personal,  and  attributed  to  him  some 
decisions  which  are  hardly  credible ;  but  it  appears  that 
Callistus  had  (1)  begun  to  grant  absolution  for  sins  of 
schism  and  sensuality  on  rather  easy  terms,  (2)  refused 
to  allow  the  deposition  of  bishops  for  scandalous  conduct, 
(3)  permitted  the  clergy  to  marry,  and  allowed  persons 
twice  or  thrice  married  to  keep  their  place  among  the 
clergy.  LikeTertullian,  Hippolytus  thought  this  slackness 
intolerable,  and  seceded  from  the  Church.  He  had  been 
bishop  of  Portus  at  the  mouth  of  the  Tiber;  after  his  seces- 
sion, it  is  said  that  he  became  an  ^  anti-pope '  in  Rome, 
but  this  is  highly  uncertain  ;  possibly  the  tradition  arose 
from  the  number  of  Roman  Churchmen  who  shared  his 
antagonism  to  Callistus,  He  appears  to  have  returned 
to  the  Church  after  Callistus'  death,  and  in  a.d.  235  he 
was  banished  with  the  bishop  Pontianus  to  Sardinia,  *  an 
unhealthy  island,'  where  he  died.  His  body  was  brought 
back  to  Rome  with  that  of  Pontianus,  and  both  confessors 
were  thenceforward  commemorated  on  the  13th  of  August, 
the  day  of  their  '  deposition '  in  the  catacombs. 

Cornelius  and  Novatian. — The  problem  of  discipline  runs 
through  nearly  the  whole  of  our  period  :  in  times  of  perse- 
cution it  became  acute,  and  in  times  of  peace  the  absence 
of  danger  so  relaxed  the  moral  fibre  of  Churchmen  as  to 
provide  new  matter  for  controversy.  The  ^Long  Peace,' 
which  gave  the  Church  rest  from  persecution  for  thirty 
years  (220-250),  was  such  a  time  of  relaxation.  The  per- 
secution of  Decius  began  early  in  250  and  lasted  till  the 
spring  of  251.  The  Roman  bishop  Fabian  was  martyred  in 
250;  it  was  impossible  to  elect  his  successor  before  June  in 


CHURCHES  OF  ROME  AND  ALEXANDRIA  99 

the  following  year.  The  most  able  thinker  in  Rome  was 
then  Novatian,  whose  book  De  Trinitate  was  the  first  Latin 
theological  work  produced  by  the  Roman  church.  But 
Novatian  was  a  man  of  the  extreme  Puritan  type.  There 
had  been  many  cases  of  apostasy  during  the  persecution, 
and  Novatian  with  many  others  of  the  clergy  advocated 
the  irrevocable  exclusion  of  the  lapsi  from  communion. 
This  party  did  not,  however,  command  a  majority  at  Rome, 
and  Cornelius,  a  man  of  less  unpractical  views,  was  com- 
pelled to  accept  election  as  bishop.  Novatian  had  hopes 
that  the  church  of  Carthage  and  its  great  bishop  Cyprian 
would  side  with  him  against  the  party  of  laxity.  The 
news  of  Cornelius'  election  reached  Carthage  at  the  same 
time  as  that  of  Novatian's  protest  against  it.  Cyprian  sent 
to  Rome  to  make  sure  of  the  facts,  but  by  this  time 
Novatian  had  persuaded  three  Italian  bishops  to  con- 
secrate him  as  anti-pope.  Cyprian  was  keenly  alive  to 
the  importance  of  discipline,  but  he  was  also  a  states- 
man; and  as  he  recognised  that  the  procedure  of 
Cornelius'  appointment  had  been  perfectly  legitimate,  he 
procured  the  excommunication  of  Novatian  by  a  Cartha- 
ginian council.  About  the  same  time  —  late  in  the 
summer  of  251 — sixty  bishops  assembled  at  Rome  also 
cut  Novatian  off  from  their  communion. 

The  Novatianists  soon  became  a  powerful  sect ;  they 
came  to  hold  that  all  deadly  sin,  and  not  merely  apostasy, 
made  restoration  impossible,  and  called  themselves 
Cathari,  or  the  pure  men,  to  mark  themselves  olF  from 
the  churches  which  permitted  sinners  and  saints — like 
wheat  and  tares — to  exist  together  in  the  same  field. 
They  were  very  strong  in  Africa,  Gaul,  North  Italy,  and 
Asia  Minor  till  the  end  of  the  fourth  century ;  in  the 
fifth,  after  having  shared — as  opponents  of  Arianism — 
the  varying  fortunes  of  the  orthodox  party,  they  began 
to  be  merged  in  the  other  Puritan  sects. 

A  letter  of  Cornelius  enables  us  to  estimate  the  size  of 
the  Roman  church  in  a.d.  250  :  there  were  46  priests, 
7  deacons,  7  subdeacons,  42  acolytes,  52  exorcists, 
52  readers  and  doorkeepers,  1500  widows  and  orphans. 

StephanuB  and  Cyprian. — The  pontificate  of  Stephanus 
(254-257)  supplies,  in  two  diflScult  cases,  evidence  as  to  the 


100    CHURCH    HISTORY   TO   A.D.    326 

degree  of  authority  which  a  strong-minded  pope  could 
claim  at  this  time^  and  the  spirit  with  which  this  claim  was 
met  by  other  bishops.  In  the  Decian  persecution,  two 
Spanish  bishops,  Basilides  and  Martialis,  had  renounced 
the  faith,  the  latter  in  an  open  and  scandalous  way.  They 
were  held  to  have  forfeited  their  position,  and  their  sees 
were  filled  up.  They  accordingly  went  to  Rome,  and 
persuaded  Stephauus  to  intervene  on  their  behalf. 
Sabinus  and  Felix,  their  successors,  thereupon  appealed 
to  Cyprian  and  a  council  at  Carthage.  Cyprian  did  not 
hesitate  to  put  aside  the  authority  of  Stephanus,  although 
he  excused  the  pope  himself  on  the  ground  of  the  false 
statements  by  which  he  had  been  misled. 

Dispute  about  re-baptism. — Cyprian  adopted  a  rather 
hostile  tone  to  Stephanus  later  in  254,  when  urging 
him  to  procure  the  removal  of  Marcianus  of  Aries, 
who  had  become  a  Novatianist ;  in  the  next  year  there 
was  an  open  quarrel  between  Rome  on  the  one  side 
and  Africa  with  the  Asiatic  churches  on  the  other. 
Holding  that  a  man  who  does  not  believe  rightly 
about  the  Trinity  could  not  baptize  duly  into  the 
Name  of  the  Trinity,  the  African  and  Asiatic  churches 
had  been  accustomed  to  re-baptize  all  heretics  who  re- 
turned to  their  communion.  At  Rome,  on  the  other 
hand,  it  had  been  usual  to  re-admit  them  by  imposition 
of  hands.  In  255  a  council  of  seventy-one  bishops,  under 
the  presidency  of  Cyprian,  formally  adopted  the  principle 
of  re-baptism.  Cyprian  communicated  their  decision  to 
Stephanus,  explaining  that  it  was  not  meant  to  force  the 
hand  of  other  Churches.  Stephanus  in  reply  threatened 
the  whole  African  Church  with  excommunication  ;  and 
in  spite  of  another  conciliar  decision  from  Carthage,  he 
actually  carried  out  his  threat.  This  action  was  not 
isolated  :  in  pursuance  of  the  same  policy,  Stephanus  had 
previously  excommunicated  the  Churches  of  Cappadocia, 
Cilicia,  Galatia,  and  the  provinces  near  them  for  the 
same  reason.  Firmilian  of  Csesarea  in  Cappadocia  wrote 
a  letter  of  sympathy  to  Cyprian,  whom  Stephanus  had 
called  a  '  false  Christ '  and  a  'worker  of  deceit.'  Like 
Irenaeus  in  the  case  of  Victor,  Firmilian  appealed  from 
Stephanus  to  the  toleration   of  earlier  ages;    and    his 


CHURCHES  OF  ROME  AND  ALEXANDRIA    101 

apostrophe  to  the  pope  sums  up  the  situation — 'thou 
hast  excommunicated  thyself.'  The  Church  was^  in  fact^ 
not  yet  ripe  for  a  papacy  ;  and  Stephanus'  claim  to  be  a 
'  bishop  of  bishops  '  could  still  be  regarded  as  an  assump- 
tion of  tyranny  and  an  invasion  of  episcopal  rights. 
The  baptismal  controversy  was  in  fact  decided  (for  the 
west  only),  by  the  council  of  Aries  in  814,  in  favour  of  the 
Roman  view ;  but  when  the  Africans  submitted,  they 
bowed  to  the  necessity  of  union,  and  not  to  the  force  of 
a  papal  decision. 

The  Church  of  the  capital  was,  however,  moving  to- 
wards a  foremost  position  in  this  century ;  and  on  one 
occasion  this  pre-eminence  was  recognised  by  an  emperor. 
Paul  of  Samosata,  bishop  of  Antioch,  was  deposed  by  a 
synod  in  269  for  heresy  ;  but  being  a  highly  influential 
person,  he  ventured  to  disregard  the  sentence  and  retain 
the  episcopal  residence.  A  civil  action  resulted,  which 
came  in  172  before  the  emperor  Aurelian.  His  decision 
was  noteworthy  :  it  held  that  the  ecclesiastical  buildings 
of  Antioch  belonged  to  the  bishop  whom  the  bishops  of 
Rome  and  Italy  should  recognise. 

2.  The  Church  of  Alexandria. — The  origin  of  Christi- 
anity in  Egypt  is  wholly  unknown.  Eusebius  mentions 
a  tradition  that  S.  Mark  preached  there,  but  he  makes  it 
clear  that  he  had  no  evidence  to  confirm  it ;  and  little 
reliance  can  be  placed  on  his  list  of  early  Alexandrian 
bishops.  Alexandria  was  the  home  of  Gnosticism  before 
A.D.  140,  and  its  Christianity  must  therefore  go  back 
beyond  that  date ;  and  as  it  had  for  several  centuries 
been  the  home  of  a  great  Jewish  colony,  there  is  some 
ground  for  presuming  that  a  Church  was  founded  there 
at  a  very  early  date.  At  the  beginning  of  the  third 
century  there  were  Christians  far  up  the  Nile,  in  the 
Thebaid  ;  and  a  hundred  years  later  that  district  was  the 
home  of  Egyptian  monasticism,  the  great  ascetic  move- 
ment from  which  the  monasticism  of  the  West  took  its 
rise ;  but  in  our  period  the  Church  of  Alexandria  alone 
has  a  real  history. 

Of  the  population  of  Alexandria  a  third  part  were 
Jews ;  the  other  two-thirds  were  a  medley  of  races — 
Egyptian,  Greek,  and  Grseco-Egyptian.     The  religion  of 


102    CHURCH    HISTORY   TO   A.D.    325 

the  place  was  cosmopolitan  :  the  cult  of  the  old  Egyptian 
deities  and  the  religions  of  the  Greek  world  went  on 
side  by  side  ;  but  the  intellectual  life  which  made  Alex- 
andria the  centre  of  the  world's  culture  was  purely 
Greek.  The  unique  library  of  Ptolemy  and  the  richly 
endowed  Museum  or  university  had  created  a  great 
tradition  of  Alexandrian  scholarship  before  the  Christian 
era ;  and  when  the  Church  first  appears  there,  the  great 
period  of  Alexandrian  philosophy  was  just  beginning. 
The  literature  of  the  scholars  was  that  of  Greece ;  the 
philosophers  took  their  name  and  inspiration  from 
Plato. 

The  Cateclietical  School. — In  a  place  where  thought 
was  so  keen  and  restless,  the  instruction  of  converts 
to  Christianity  was  of  the  first  importance;  the  first 
fact  recorded  of  the  Alexandrian  Church  was  the  foun- 
dation of  a  school  in  which  catechumens  were  taught 
the  elements  of  the  faith,  and  those  who  wished  could 
have  more  advanced  instruction.  This  Catechetical  School 
became  a  kind  of  Christian  university,  a  supplement 
and  rival  to  the  Museum,  and  a  centre  of  resistance 
to  the  schools  of  the  Gnostics.  Its  first  head  whose  life 
is  known  was  Pantcenus,  of  whom  we  hear  from  his 
great  pupil  Clement,  who  succeeded  him  about  the  year 
190.  Clement  travelled  far  as  a  young  man,  and  came 
under  the  influence  of  six  successive  Christian  teachers — 
one  in  Greece,  two  in  South  Italy,  one  in  Assyria,  one 
in  Palestine,  one  in  Egypt — and  the  last  of  these  was 
Pantaenus.  Clement's  master  was  also  a  traveller,  and 
taught  as  a  missionary  in  India.  Perhaps  Clement's 
work  in  the  catechetical  school  began  during  Pantaenus' 
absence  in  the  East.  It  did  not  last  long :  in  202  the 
persecution  of  Septimius  Severus  broke  up  the  school  for 
a  time,  and  Clement  left  Alexandria.  A  few  years  later 
he  was  in  Cappadocia,  as  we  learn  from  a  letter  of  his 
friend  and  pupil  Alexander,  afterwards  bishop  of  Jeru- 
salem :  he  died  before  216. 

Clement's  writings.— Clement  was  a  man  of  great  learn- 
ing :  the  number  of  the  works  quoted  in  his  books  (over 
600)  attests  the  width  of  his  reading.  Three  of  his  extant 
writings  (the  Exhortation  to  the  Greeks,  the  Tutor,  and  the 


CHURCHES  OF  ROME  AND  ALEXANDRIA  103 

Stromateis  or  miscellanies)  form  a  continuous  series,  and  so 
illustrate  for  us  the  progressive  work  of  the  catechetical 
school.  The  first  is  introductory  and  comparative :  it 
contrasts  the  efi^orts  of  Greek  philosophy  with  the  revela- 
tion of  the  Divine  Word  in  Christy  and  was  doubtless 
meant  to  show  to  converts  the  nature  of  the  change  they 
were  making.  In  the  second,  the  Tutor  is  Christ  Him- 
self, the  true  educator  of  men,  who  trains  men  up  by 
love  and  sternness  to  the  vision  of  God.  The  purpose 
of  the  book  is  positive  and  practical :  it  deals  with  the 
whole  range  of  conduct;  and  because  the  ^sons  of  God  ' 
must  have  a  dignity  of  behaviour  which  the  Tutor  alone 
can  impart,  it  gives  directions  about  common  things 
— eating,  dress,  entertainments,  and  the  like — with  a 
minuteness  which  shows  how  subtle  and  deep  the 
difi^erences  between  Pagan  and  Christian  morals  were. 
The  Stromateis  (the  word  properly  means  the  bundles 
into  which  bedclothes  were  tied  up)  form  a  miscel- 
laneous introduction  to  Christian  philosophy  ;  and  they 
were  continued  in  a  book  called  Outlines,  in  which  the 
canonical  Scriptures  were  expounded  as  the  basis  of 
theology. 

The  work  of  Clement  was  of  the  first  importance.  He 
had  to  justify  the  faith  in  the  face  of  the  highest  culture 
of  the  day,  at  a  time  when  the  Gnostics  had  tried  to 
cheapen  it  by  a  compromise  with  Paganism.  His  method 
was  singularly  bold  and  liberal.  Others  chose  simply  to 
repudiate  both  Hellenism  and  gnosis ;  Clement  claimed 
for  Christianity  the  dignity  of  the  highest  wisdom,  and 
dared  to  depict  the  Christian  as  the  true  Agnostic'  This 
man  of  true  knowledge,  he  said,  makes  all  philosophy 
his  own,  because  it  is  the  Divine  preparation  for  the 
Gospel :  he  uses  and  studies  the  world  because  it  leads 
him  to  God  ;  in  converse  with  Him,  he  has  such  a  vision 
of  the  Divine  that  he  realises  man's  highest  destiny  in 
becoming  a  very  image  of  God,  sealed  by  the  Word  in 
whom  God  is  made  manifest  to  men. 

Origen,  A.D.  185-253. — Among  Clement's  hearers  was  a 
boy  called  Origen,  an  Egyptian  by  race,  but  the  son  of 
Christian  parents.  Origen  was  born  about  a.d.  185.  His 
father,  Leonidas,  gave  him  a  double  education  in  secular 


104    CHURCH    HISTORY   TO   A.D.    325 

and  sacred  literature.  Origen  lived  and  learned  from  the 
first  with  enthusiasm ;  his  father  was  martyred  in  202,  and 
Origen_,  who  would  have  died  with  him  if  his  mother  had 
not  hid  his  clothes,  was  already  learned  enough  to  sup- 
port his  family  by  teaching.  When  he  was  eighteen,  the 
bishop  Demetrius  trusted  him  to  organise  the  catechetical 
school,  which  the  persecution  had  dispersed.  Origen's 
first  task  was  to  fortify  his  pupils  during  a  renewal  of 
the  persecution,  in  which  he  showed  reckless  courage. 
When  peace  returned,  he  gave  himself  to  the  strenuous 
life  of  an  ascetic  scholar,  living,  we  are  told,  on  sixpence 
a  day,  the  sum  which  the  sale  of  his  classical  manuscripts 
produced.  His  first  period  of  work  in  the  catechetical 
school  (203-215)  was  broken  by  several  journeys  :  before 
212  he  carried  out  his  wish  to  see  the  most  ancient 
Church  of  the  Romans,  and  we  hear  also  of  his 
visiting  Greece,  Asia  Minor,  Palestine,  and  Arabia. 
In  215  Alexandria  again  became  unsafe  for  Christians, 
and  Origen  moved  for  four  years  to  Caesarea  in 
Palestine.  There  his  genius  was  so  highly  valued 
that  Theoctistus,  the  local  bishop,  and  Alexander  of 
Jerusalem  asked  him  to  preach  in  church  before  them. 
Demetrius  of  Alexandria,  to  whom  the  fame  of  Origen 
was  not  wholly  welcome,  sent  a  protest  and  recalled 
Origen  from  Caesarea.  For  some  twelve  years  more 
Origen  taught  and  wrote  in  Alexandria,  aided  through 
the  generosity  of  his  friend  Ambrosius  by  a  regular  staff 
of  scribes  and  shorthand  writers.  But  towards  230  he 
was  called  to  Achaia  to  use  his  influence  in  a  dogmatic 
controversy.  He  paid  a  visit  to  Caesarea  on  the  way,  and 
there  his  friends  Theoctistus  and  Alexander,  mindful  of 
the  old  dispute,  ordained  him  priest.  AVTien  his  journey 
was  ended,  he  found  Demetrius  indignant  and  hostile.  Ac- 
cording to  the  usages  of  Alexandria,  Origen's  ordination 
by  bishops  of  another  province  was  probably  irregular ; 
and  another  grave  reason,  an  act  of  self-mutilation,  which 
had  probably  restrained  Demetrius  from  giving  him 
ordination,  was  now  thought  serious  enough  to  call  for 
his  expulsion  from  Alexandria  and  deposition  from  the 
priesthood.  Origen  left  Alexandria  in  231,  and  went 
back  to  Caesarea,  where  his  prestige  entirely  outweighed 


CHURCHES  OF  ROME  AND  ALEXANDRIA    105 

the  decision  of  Demetrius  and  his  synods.  At  Caesarea 
he  spent  the  rest  of  his  active  life_,  expounding  the  Bible 
to  ordinary  congregations  on  Wednesdays  and  Fridays_, 
educating  men  in  advanced  philosophy,,  and  doing 
strenuous  literary  work.  He  exercised  at  the  same  time 
a  wide  influence  on  the  Church ;  among  the  many  who 
sought  his  advice  were  the  Churchmen  of  Bostra  in 
Arabia,  whose  bishop,  Beryllus,  had  adopted  a  modalist 
view  of  the  Incarnation.  Origen  went  to  Bostra,  and 
both  then  and  on  a  second  occasion  was  able  to  change 
the  opinions  of  his  opponents  by  argument.  In  the 
persecutions  of  250  and  251,  Origen  was  imprisoned  and 
tortured  at  Tyre ;  his  health  was  broken  by  these  suffer- 
ings, and  in  253  he  died,  being  then  sixty-nine  years  old. 
His  tomb  at  Tyre  was  visited  and  honoured  as  long  as 
the  city  stood. 

Origen's  writings.— Origen  left  behind  him  a  marvellous 
amount  of  Biblical,  dogmatic,  and  apologetic  work :  of  the 
Biblical  work,  besides  innumerable  homilies  and  commen- 
taries, we  may  mention  the  Hexapla,  which  was  intended 
to  determine  the  text  of  the  Old  Testament  by  exhibiting 
the  original  Hebrew  and  the  various  Greek  versions  in 
parallel  columns.  The  great  apologetic  work  against 
Celsus  has  already  been  mentioned  (p.  68).  The  most 
original  of  his  dogmatic  works  was  that  On  First  Prin- 
ciples,  the  earliest  systematic  attempt  at  a  Christian 
philosophy  of  religion:  its  four  books  deal  with  the  Being 
of  God  and  the  end  of  man,  with  the  work  of  redemption 
and  the  destiny  of  redeemed  mankind,  with  moral  law  and 
human  responsibility,  and  with  Holy  Scripture  as  the 
basis  of  Christian  doctrine. 

Greek  Christianity  produced  no  greater  mind  than 
that  of  Origen,  and  among  the  Latins  no  one  but  S. 
Augustine  stands  on  so  high  a  level.  That  he  was  with- 
out the  modern  sense  of  historical  perspective,  and  that, 
like  Clement,  he  allowed  himself  a  quite  illegitimate  use 
of  allegorical  interpretation,  were  accidents  of  the  age  in 
which  he  lived.  But  in  many  ways  he  was  singularly 
modern.  Living  before  the  age  of  dogmatic  definition, 
he  thought  out  the  problems  of  faith  and  life  with  a 
freedom  which  was  impossible  in  later  ages ;  and  since  he 


106    CHURCH   HISTORY   TO   A.D.    325 

was  not  restricted  even  by  a  system  of  his  own  making, 
his  many-sidedness  made  him  liable  to  much  misunder- 
standing. Thus,  although  Athanasius  rightly  vindicated 
his  fundamental  orthodoxy,  he  wrote  some  passages 
which  enabled  the  Arians  to  claim  him  for  their  party. 
Bitter  controversies  raged  round  his  name,  especially  in 
the  fourth  and  fifth  centuries,  and  yet  there  were  few  or 
the  Greek  fathers  who  did  not  receive  from  him,  however 
remotely,  the  stimulus  and  the  main  direction  of  their 
thought. 

Successors  of  Origen. — The  successors  of  Origen  at 
Alexandria  were  faithful  to  the  tradition  of  their  great 
master :  first  Heraclas  (bishop,  233-247),  an  old  friend 
and  colleague  of  Origen,  and  then  Dionysius  the  Great, 
who  was  head  of  the  school  from  233  onwards,  and 
bishop  from  247  to  265.  Dionysius  was  a  man  of 
scholarly  and  liberal  mind.  When  the  region  of  Arsinoe 
in  Lower  Egypt  was  disturbed  by  teachers  who  took 
the  promises  of  the  Apocalypse  too  literally,  Dionysius 
wrote  a  book  which  contained  acute  critical  treatment 
of  the  Apocalypse,  and  handled  the  millenarians  with 
admirable  gentleness.  As  we  should  expect,  he  sided 
with  Cyprian  against  the  rigorist  party  of  Novatian, 
and  with  Stephanus  in  the  controversy  about  re-bap- 
tism. He  resisted  the  tendency  to  ignore  heretical 
literature,  preferring  to  condemn  no  one  unheard. 
In  the  Trinitarian  controversies  of  the  time,  he  took 
a  prominent  part,  as  a  firm  but  reasonable  opponent  of 
Paul  of  Samosata.  His  namesake,  Dionysius  of  Rome, 
thought  that  his  opposition  to  Sabellianism  was  too 
unguarded,  and  taxed  him  with  speaking  as  though 
there  were  three  separate  Gods,  but  the  Alexandrian 
was  able  to  vindicate  his  orthodoxy  :  he  had  indeed  only 
spoken  of  three  Divine  hypostases  or  ^  Persons,'  and  this 
expression  was  at  that  time  understood  in  Rome  to  mean 
three  Divine  Natures,  so  that  the  difficulty  was  merely 
verbal. 

After  Dionysius  the  name  of  Pierius  deserves  mention; 
for  as  head  of  the  catechetical  school  about  a.d.  270,  he 
had  among  his  pupils  the  keen  student  and  defender  of 
Origen,  Pamphilus,  who    collected   a    great    library  at 


CHURCHES  OF  ROME  AND  ALEXANDRIA  107 

Caesarea,  and  there  carried  on  the  great  tradition  of 
textual  scholarship  which  had  begun  with  Origen.  In 
this  library  the  historian  Eusebius,  Pamphilus'  intimate 
friend^  found  most  of  his  materials;  and  the  work  of 
transcription  and  correction  carried  on  there  by  the  two 
friends  was  of  unique  service  in  preserving  and  propa- 
gating one  of  the  earliest  types  of  the  tert  of  the  New 
Testament 


CHAPTER  IX 

CHURCH    AND    STATE    FROM    SEPTIMUS    SEVERUS 
TO    CONSTANTINE 

The  Last  Persecutions. — The  last  epoch  of  persecution  falls 
into  well-marked  periods :  from  200  to  211  we  have  the 
persecution  of  Septimius  Severus^  from  250  to  258  those 
of  Decius,  Gallus,  and  Valerian,  and  from  802-314  that 
of  Diocletian.  These  three  periods  were  separated  by- 
two  long  intervals  of  practically  unbroken  peace. 

Septimius  Severus,  A.D,  192-211. — Commodus  was  mur- 
dered in  192 ;  after  a  short  struggle,  the  power  of  the 
army  placed  on  the  throne  the  first  of  seven  non-Roman 
emperors,  Septimius  Severus,  an  Egyptian.  Severus  was 
not  ill-disposed  to  the  Church  :  according  to  Tertullian, 
he  gave  his  son  Caracalla  a  Christian  nurse,  allowed  a 
Christian  to  anoint  him  with  oil  when  he  was  ill,  and 
publicly  defended  the  Church  from  popular  hatred. 
Yet  in  Africa  at  least  (as  appears  from  Tertullian's  bitter 
Apologeticus,  written  in  197),  in  spite  of  the  goodwill  of 
individual  magistrates,  there  was  some  persecution  ;  and 
about  A.D.  200,  the  emperor  himself  tried  to  put  an  end 
to  the  struggle  between  Church  and  State.  He  issued  a 
novel  edict,  which  renewed  an  old  law  against  the  circum- 
cision of  non-Jews,  and  at  the  same  time  forbade  the 
Church  to  make  converts.  The  special  aim  of  this 
measure  accounts  for  the  sudden  dispersion  of  the 
Alexandrian  catechetical  school  and  the  flight  of  Clement 
its  head ;  the  attack  on  catechumens  and  new  converts  is 
also  illustrated  by  the  beautiful  Acta  of  Per  pet  ua  and 
Felicitas,  who  with  four  companions  suffered  martyrdom 
at  Carthage.  It  is  probable  that  the  new  edict  also 
stimulated  the  action  of  the  existing  law.  In  Africa  the 
108 


SEPTIMIUS  SEVERUS  TO  CONSTANTINE    109 

Christian  burial-places  were  desecrated,  and  popular 
feeling  kept  the  persecution  alive  till  205  or  206.  In 
the  last  two  years  of  Severus*  reign,  210  and  211,  it 
broke  out  again,  at  least  in  Syria,  Cappadocia,  Africa, 
and  Alexandria ;  but  with  the  accession  of  Caracalla 
(211-218)  it  came  to  an  end. 

The  Long  Peace,  A.D.  211-250. — The  Church  had  now 
become  too  large  and  influential  to  be  persecuted  as  a 
matter  of  routine ;  from  Severus  onwards  each  of  the 
persecutions  had  a  definite  motive  and  method.  The 
Long  Peace  (211-250)  was  favoured  also  by  the  religious 
conditions  of  the  time,  which  was  marked  by  a  strong 
revival  of  speculative  and  religious  interests :  men  be- 
came ready  to  accept  any  and  every  creed.  The  temper 
of  such  an  age  was  more  ready  to  compete  with  the 
Church  than  to  oppress  it.  Julia  Domna,  the  wife  of 
Severus,  made  Philostratus  write  a  life  of  Apollonius  of 
Tyana,  a  first-century  philosopher ;  and  this  life,  with 
its  miracles  and  discourses,  was  simply  modelled  on  the 
life  of  our  Lord.  The  age  was  at  least  ready  for  a  moral 
and  monotheistic  worship  ;  it  is  probable  that  the  Church 
gained  largely  from  this  demand,  and  certainly  the 
religion  of  Mithras  the  sun-god  became  increasingly 
popular.  The  emperor  Alexander  Severus  (A.D.  222-235) 
was  a  typical  eclectic :  his  chapel  contained  a  statue  of 
Christ,  together  with  figures  of  Orpheus,  Hercules,  and 
Abraham,  while  lesser  heroes,  such  as  Achilles  and  Virgil, 
were  venerated  in  a  smaller  room.  Philip  the  Arabian 
(a.d.  244-249)  was  even  more  well-disposed  to  the  Church; 
by  later  writers  he  was  reckoned  the  first  Christian 
emperor. 

The  only  ruler  to  break  this  series  of  tolerant  princes 
was  Maximinus  tlie  Thracian  (A.D.  235-238),  a  mere  bar- 
barian despot,  who  chose  to  destroy  everything  that  his 
predecessor  and  victim  had  honoured.  His  reign  was  a 
time  of  great  distress  in  various  parts  of  the  Church,  as 
is  shown  by  the  exile  of  Pontianus  and  Hippolytus  from 
Rome,  the  retirement  of  Origen  from  Caesarea,  and  the 
abandonment  of  the  Cappadocian  church  to  an  '  acerbus 
et  dirus  persecutor,*  the  pro-consul  Serenianus. 

Progress  under  the  Peace. — With  the  exception  of  the 


no    CHURCH    HISTORY   TO   A.D.    326 

above  interval,  the  forty  years  of  peace  were  a  period  of 
unique  opportunities  for  the  Church.  They  produced 
great  literary  results,  in  the  work  of  Tertullian,  Hip- 
polytus,  Origen,  and  Novatian ;  and  they  enabled  the 
Church  to  obtain  some  degree  of  legal  recognition  as  a 
corporate  body.  Thus  Alexander  Severus  preferred  to 
adjudge  a  disputed  piece  of  land  across  the  Tiber  to  the 
Christians  rather  than  to  the  guild  of  cooks;  separate  build- 
ings began  to  be  erected  for  worship,  and  the  Roman  Church 
began  to  construct  and  administer  catacombs  as  general 
places  of  burial  for  its  members.  The  earlier  catacombs, 
such  as  those  of  Domitilla,  were  the  property  of  private 
families :  the  cemetery  which  the  future  bishop  Callistus 
was  appointed  to  manage  {Goemeterium  Callisti)  was  the 
lirst  to  become  the  corporate  property  of  the  Church. 

The  Persecution  under  Decius,  A.D.  250-251. — Decius, 
who  came  to  the  throne  in  249,  was  the  first  emperor  of 
Roman  birth  since  Commodus,  and  the  first  of  Roman 
mind  since  Commodus'  father.  He  set  himself  a  heavy 
task.  The  Goths  were  threatening  the  north-eastern 
frontier,  and  the  empire  seemed  to  have  lost  all  stability 
and  cohesion.  Decius  determined  to  return  to  the  old 
Roman  ideal,  revived  the  office  of  censor  morum,  and 
attempted  a  moral  and  religious  reform.  The  religion 
which  he  wished  to  revive  was  that  of  the  empire ;  and 
accordingly  he  found  himself  drawn  into  a  war  with  the 
Church.  An  edict,  issued  late  in  a.d.  249,  required  all 
Christians  to  ofi^er  incense  or  sacrifice  to  the  imperial 
gods.  P'ive  commissioners  in  each  town  were  empowered 
to  punish  recalcitrants  with  imprisonment  or  exile,  and 
their  work  was  followed  up  by  the  proconsul,  who  went 
round  on  circuit  to  enforce  submission  on  pain  of  torture 
or  death.  The  object  of  this  policy  was  to  deplete  the 
Church  by  apostasy,  and  so  to  use  the  stringency  of 
ecclesiastical  discipline  against  the  Church  itself.  The 
attack  fell  heavily  on  the  bishops  and  eminent  clergy  : 
Fabian  of  Rome,  Babylas  of  Antioch,  and  Alexander  of 
Jerusalem  were  put  to  death,  while  Origen,  Dionysius 
of  Alexandria,  Gregory  Thaumaturgus  of  Neo-Caesarea 
in  Pontus,  Maximus  of  Nola,  and  Cyprian  of  Carthage 
retired  before  the  storm. 


SEPTIMIUS   SEVERUS  TO  CONSTANTINE    111 

Tne  Lapsed  Christians. — The  letters  of  Cyprian  and 
Dionysius  give  copious  information  of  the  success  of  the 
edict:  very  large  numbers  at  Alexandria,  Rome,  and 
Carthage  surrendered  their  faith_,  some  by  offering  incense 
or  sacrifice  {thurificati,  sacrificati),  and  others  (libellatici) 
by  obtaining  official  certificates  or  libelii  attesting  their 
submission  to  the  edict.  Cyprian's  letters — the  work  of 
a  man  who  was  endowed  with  a  combination  of  spiritual, 
literary,  and  practical  powers  to  which  the  ante-Nicene 
Church  ofi'ers  no  parallel — enable  us  to  follow  the  com- 
plex problems  of  discipline  to  which  this  widespread 
calamity  gave  rise.  From  his  place  of  retirement  he 
had  first  to  stand  firm  against  the  presumption  of  the 
imprisoned  confessors,  who  ventured  to  issue  certificates 
of  absolution  to  individual  apostates,  and  even  asked  the 
bishops  to  promulgate  their  grant  of  re-admission  to  all 
the  lapsi.  Cyprian's  firmness  led  Novatian  and  the  Roman 
rigorists  to  hope  that  he  would  advocate  a  merciless 
treatment  of  all  the  lapsed ;  but  Cyprian  was  a  states- 
man and  not  an  unthinking  extremist.  He  succeeded 
in  staving  off  the  demands  of  both  parties  till  the  summer 
of  A.D.  251,  when  the  Council  of  Carthage  confirmed  his 
practical  policy,  and  decided  (1)  that  each  case  should 
be  treated  separately  ;  (2)  that  sacrificati,  if  penitent, 
might  hope  for  restoration  in  the  hour  of  death  ;  (3)  that 
less  culpable  apostates,  after  doing  penance,  might  be 
restored  at  once  by  their  bishops;  (4)  that  those  who 
deferred  their  act  of  repentance  till  the  hour  of  death 
should  not  be  received  back  then :  and  (5)  that  apostasy 
on  the  part  of  clergy  involved  perpetual  exclusion  from 
orders. 

Decius  was  drawn  off  into  Dacia  by  the  Gothic  invasion, 
early  in  a.d.  251,  and  there  died. 

Persecution  under  Gallus,  A.D.  253. — In  a.d.  252  many 
provinces  were  visited  by  a  pestilence;  Numidia  also 
suffered  from  the  incursions  of  Berbers  from  the  south. 
Relief  had  to  be  organised  for  the  captive  Christians 
whom  these  nomads  had  deported ;  but  the  plague  pro- 
vided far  greater  tasks.  Cyprian  organised  a  staff  of 
nurses  and  a  burial  fund ;  but  this  work  of  charity 
did  not  blind  the  Pagan  population  to  the  absence  of 


112    CHURCH    HISTORY   TO   A.D.    326 

Christians  from  the  processions  and  sacrifices  by  which 
the  angry  gods  were  approached.  Under  Gallus,  there- 
fore, in  A.D.  253j  the  persecution  broke  out  once  more. 
Cornelius,  bishop  of  Rome,  was  exiled  to  Centumcellae 
(Civita  Vecchia)  ;  and  at  Carthage,  so  much  severity  was 
expected,  that  a  council  of  forty-two  bishops  decided  to 
re-admit  all  penitents  to  communion,  so  that  the  Church 
might  rally  its  full  strength  against  the  enemy. 

This  short  episode  was,  however,  almost  trivial  in 
comparison  with  the  persecution  under  Valerian,  A.D.  253- 
258.  Valerian  made  a  deliberate  effort  to  annihilate  the 
Church.  The  early  years  of  his  reign  gave  the  Christians 
both  peace  and  honour  ;  '  the  emperor's  household,'  says 
Dionysius  of  Alexandria,  ^  was  a  church  of  God.'  But 
the  empire  was  menaced  literally  on  all  sides  by  barbarian 
invaders,  and  the  emperor  was  strongly  pressed  by  his 
minister,  Macrianus,  to  restore  its  internal  unity  by 
destroying  the  Church  ;  and  in  a.d.  257  an  edict  was  put 
out  ordering  all  bishops,  priests,  and  deacons  to  do 
sacrifice  on  pain  of  exile,  and  forbidding  all  meetings  for 
worship  and  visits  to  Christian  cemeteries.  Dionysius 
and  Cyprian  were  banished,  and  a  great  number  of 
African  clergy  condemned  to  the  mines.  But  this  first 
blow  was  only  a  preliminary.  In  a.d.  258  the  emperor 
wrote  to  the  senate,  directing  tlie  execution  of  an  order 
(1)  that  all  bishops,  priests,  and  deacons  should  be  put 
to  death  ;  (2)  that  Christians  of  senatorial  or  equestrian 
rank  should  lose  their  status  and  property,  and  then,  if 
obstinate,  be  beheaded;  (3)  that  women  of  the  same 
position  should  suffer  confiscation  and  banishment ; 
(4)  that  members  of  the  imperial  household  should  be 
sent  to  work  as  slaves  on  the  imperial  estates.  The 
whole  Western  Church  was  heavily  afflicted  by  this 
pitiless  attack :  in  the  East,  the  pressure  of  foreign 
invasion  appears  to  have  lessened  its  effect.  S.  Cyprian 
was  beheaded  in  September  a.d.  258  ;  the  Roman  bishop 
S.  Xystus,  with  four  of  his  deacons,  had  been  murdered 
during  divine  worship  a  month  before,  and  the  young 
Roman  deacon,  S.  Lawrence,  had  followed  them  after  a 
few  days. 

Second  Peace  of  the  Church,  A.D.  260-303. — In  a.d.  260 


SEPTIMIUS  SEVERUS  TO  CONSTANTINE     113 

Valerian  was  campaigning  beyond  the  Euphrates  against 
the  Persians :  their  king.  Sapor,  treacherously  made  him 
prisoner  and  put  him  to  death.  His  son,  Gallienus 
(260-268),  an  ineffective  dilettante,  during  whose  reign 
nineteen  pretenders  attempted  to  become  master  of  the 
army,  issued  an  edict  permitting  to  Christians  the  use  of 
their  churches.  This  had  the  effect  of  making  Chris- 
tianity a  religio  licita,  and  gave  the  Church  forty  years 
of  peace.  The  capable  but  violent  ruler  Aurelian  (268- 
275)  intended  to  imitate  the  policy  of  Decius  and  Valerian, 
but  died  before  his  plan  could  be  carried  out. 

Diocletian's  Political  Reforms,  A.D.  284-305. — The  acces- 
sion of  Diocletian  was  a  turning-point  in  Roman  history. 
After  a  century  of  military  despotism  and  usurpation, 
Diocletian  created  an  administrative  system  and  a  scheme 
of  succession.  He  recognised  that  the  empire  was  now 
too  large,  its  western  half  too  separate  from  the  eastern, 
its  military  needs  too  wide,  to  be  managed  from  one 
centre  by  one  titular  head.  He  therefore  divided  his 
burden  between  four  rulers,  two  of  them  called  Augustus 
and  two  Gcesar.  He  remained  Augustus  in  the  East  and 
head  of  the  whole  state,  fixing  his  capital  at  Nicomedia, 
and  appointed  Maximian,  an  lUyrian  soldier,  as  his 
colleague  in  the  West.  The  first  eastern  Caesar  was 
Diocletian's  son-in-law  Galerius ;  and  Constantius  Chlorus, 
the  father  of  Constantine,  acted  under  Maximian. 
Galerius'  head-quarters  were  at  Sirmium  in  the  south 
of  Pannonia ;  the  western  Augustus  had  his  capital  at 
Milan,  not  in  Rome,  and  his  Caesar  was  stationed  at 
Treves.  The  Augusti  were  bound  to  retire  after  twenty 
years,  and  the  Caesars  were  to  succeed  them.  The 
empire  so  reconstructed  was  Roman  only  in  name :  the 
Roman  senators  had  long  ceased  to  be  a  political  force, 
and  the  promotion  of  Milan  deprived  them  of  even  the 
semblance  of  power. 

Persecution  Edicts  of  Diocletian,  A.D.  303-304;. — Diocletian 
left  the  Church  in  peace  for  nearly  twenty  years ;  Chris- 
tians were  numerous  at  his  court,  and  even  his  wife  and 
daughter  came  under  instruction  for  baptism.  But  a 
strong  court-party  of  Pagan  priests  and  philosophers  was 
at  work  on  behalf  of  the  old  imperial  religion.  They 
H 


114    CHURCH    HISTORY   TO   A.D.    325 

were  led  at  court  by  the  prefect  Hierocles^  and  had  a  far 
stronger  ally  in  Diocletian's  fanatic  son-in-law  Galerius. 
The  emperor  himself  was  attached  at  least  to  the  super- 
stitions of  the  old  ritual ;  and  Galerius  was  able  to 
persuade  him  in  295  to  "^purify'  the  army  by  ordering 
that  all  soldiers  should  offer  sacrifice.  Seven  years  later 
the  opposition  of  the  emperor  to  further  action  was 
overcome:  the  oracle  of  Apollo  at  Miletus,  consulted 
about  the  frequency  of  desertion  from  the  army,  replied 
that  *^he  could  not  declare  the  truth  because  of  the 
Christians/  The  result  was  a  persecution  which  did  not 
die  out  entirely  before  313.  The  first  edict  was  put  in 
force  at  the  festival  of  the  Terminalia,  February  23, 
803.  It  decreed  the  destruction  of  all  churches  and  the 
burning  of  all  sacred  books.  Further,  as  a  return  to  the 
policy  of  Valerian,  it  prohibited  all  Christian  meetings, 
and  threatened  all  who  refused  to  recant  with  degrada- 
tion or  slavery  according  to  their  rank.  The  aim  of  this 
measure  was  to  destroy  the  Church  without  bloodshed ; 
but  civil  disorders  in  Antioch  and  elsewhere,  together 
with  two  outbreaks  of  fire  in  the  palace  at  Nicomedia, 
soon  suggested  that  the  Church  was  organising  a  seditious 
resistance.  A  second  edict  therefore  ordered  the  arrest 
of  all  Christian  clergy;  and  a  third,  issued  at  the 
Vicennalia  of  Diocletian  in  December  303,  offered  them 
all  their  freedom  on  condition  of  offering  sacrifice  ;  those 
who  refused  were  to  be  liable  to  any  kind  of  torture. 
The  culminating  point  was  reached  in  304 :  Diocletian 
was  then  enfeebled  by  illness,  and  he  was  probably  not 
responsible  for  the  murderous ybwr^A  edict,  which  required 
all  persons  throughout  the  empire  to  offer  sacrifice,  on 
pain  of  death  and  confiscation. 

Galerius  and  Maximinus  Daza. — In  305,  Diocletian  and  his 
colleague  Maximian  were  forced  by  the  terms  of  the  con- 
stitution to  retire.  Galerius  became  Augustus  in  the  East, 
Constantius  in  the  West.  Galerius  found  a  fitting  partner 
in  Maximinus  Daza.  Constantius  died  in  306  and  was 
succeeded  by  Severus ;  Constantius'  son  Constantine,  who 
had  previously  been  passed  over,  now  became  Caesar. 

For  two  years  the  conflict  between  Church  and  State 
had   been  waged  all  over  the   empire,  except  in  Gaul, 


SEPTIMIUS  SEVERUS  TO  CONSTANTINE    115 

where  Constantius  had  ventured  to  neglect  all  the  edicts 
but  the  first_,  to  which  he  gave  nominal  effect  by  pulling 
down  a  few  churches.  From  305  onwards  the  whole  of 
the  west  was  free  from  persecution ;  but  Galerius  and 
Daza  in  the  east  maintained  an  intermittent  reign  of 
terror  till  311.  Daza  put  out  s.jifth  edict  in  308,  ordering 
the  restoration  of  temples  and  images,  and  enforcing 
sacrifice  once  more  on  all  his  subjects,  with  the  new 
details  that  all  who  sacrificed  should  eat  of  what  was 
offered,  and  that  all  provisions  in  the  market  should  be 
sprinkled  with  wine  or  water  that  had  been  used  in 
Pagan  ritual.  The  years  308-310  were  probably  more 
full  of  horror  for  the  Christians  of  the  East  than  any 
previous  period.  But  the  end  was  near.  Galerius  had 
done  his  worst,  and  on  his  death-bed  (311)  he  acknow- 
ledged his  failure  in  the  strangest  proclamation  in  Roman 
history.  It  accused  the  Christians  of  deserting  the 
institutions  of  the  ancients,  of  forming  sects,  of  disloyalty 
to  their  own  and  to  all  other  gods ;  it  announced  the 
failure  of  all  efforts  to  bring  them  to  a  better  mind ;  it 
proclaimed  that  Christians  might  now  exist  again  and 
establish  their  meetings  so  long  as  they  did  nothing 
against  public  order,  and  ended  by  asking  their  prayers 
for  the  State  and  the  emperors. 

Even  after  this  order  of  toleration,  Maximinus  Daza 
remained  intolerant.  We  hear  of  petitions  addressed  to 
him  from  single  cities,  asking  leave  to  get  rid  of  their 
Christian  population ;  and  along  with  the  foundation  of 
a  Pagan  Church  which  imitated  the  usages  and  forms  of 
Christianity  went  the  propagation  of  a  villainous  travesty 
of  the  gospel  story,  entitled  ^the  Acts  of  Pilate,'  which 
was  set  up  in  public  places  and  taught  in  the  schools  of 
Syria  and  Egypt.  But  Maximinus'  time  was  now  short. 
The  title  of  Augustus  was  now  claimed  by  four  rulers: 
Constantine  in  Gaul,  Maxentius  (the  nominee  of  the 
Roman  senate)  in  Italy,  Maximinus,  and  Licinius  the 
successor  of  Galerius.  Constantine  and  Licinius  com- 
bined against  the  other  two  :  Maxentius  was  crushed  by 
Constantine  at  the  Milvian  bridge,  close  to  Rome,  on 
October  28,  312,  and  Licinius  disposed  of  Maximinus 
in  313. 


116    CHURCH   HISTORY   TO   A.D.    326 

Edict  of  Milan,  A.D.  313. — These  victories  put  a  final  end 
to  persecution.  Constantino  issued  at  Milan  in  313  an 
edict  which  assured  toleration  to  all  forms  of  religion, 
and  restored  all  the  corporate  property  of  the  Church. 
Licinius  completed  the  formal  reconciliation  of  Church 
and  State  by  issuing  a  similar  order  in  the  East. 

It  is  obvious  that  these  later  persecutions  were  in- 
creasingly well  directed.  As  the  Church  came  out  into 
the  world,  its  vulnerable  points  were  more  easily  seen. 
Severus  tried  to  check  its  growth  by  attacking  new  con- 
verts ;  Decius  attacked  the  clergy  ;  Valerian  banished 
them  in  order  to  weaken  the  laity ;  and  Diocletian  com- 
bined with  this  (1)  the  demolition  of  the  churches  which 
Gallienus'  policy  had  encouraged  the  Christians  to  build, 
and  (2)  the  destruction  of  the  Scriptures.  Violence  was 
thus  done  to  every  visible  instrument  of  the  Church's 
life. 

Tlie  'Traditores.' — The  effects  of  the  wholesale  burning 
of  sacred  books  are  felt  even  now :  no  extant  Biblical 
manuscript  is  earlier  than  the  reign  of  Constantino.  As 
an  episode  in  persecution,  this  device  caused  serious 
trouble  in  the  Church.  Forty  years  of  peace  had  once 
again  multiplied  the  number  of  unheroic  and  nominal 
Christians,  who  ^in  time  of  persecution  fell  away.'  A 
special  question  of  discipline  arose  from  the  new  offence 
of  giving  up  sacred  books  or  vessels  to  be  burned.  Those 
who  took  this  easy  path  towards  safety  were  called  tra- 
ditores, and  it  was  disputed  whether  the  same  stigma  was 
deserved  by  men  who  appeased  their  persecutors  by  giving 
up  heretical  or  non-canonical  books. 

The  Donatists,  A.D.  311. — In  Africa,  as  was  to  be  ex- 
pected, a  rigorist  party  was  soon  formed,  which  asserted 
that  a  traditor  could  not  be  a  member  of  the  true  Church 
nor  perform  valid  acts  as  a  priest  or  bishop.  This  was 
a  revival  of  the  old  fanatic  spirit  which  could  not  tolerate 
wisdom  during  persecution  nor  mercy  afterwards.  At 
Carthage  this  led  to  open  schism.  The  party  which  was 
adverse  to  the  clemency  of  the  bishop  Mensurius  and  his 
Buccessor  Csecilian  asserted  that  Caecilian  had  been  unjust 
to  the  more  zealous  confessors,  and  that  he  was  not  a 
true  bishop,  because  Felix  of  Aptunga,  who  consecrated 


SEPTIMIUS  SEVERUS  TO  CONSTANTINE    117 

him,  was  a  traditor.  In  a.d.  311  they  set  up  an  opposi- 
tion hishop,  Majorinus.  From  Donatus,  who  succeeded 
Majorinus  in  a.d.  315,  this  sect  came  to  be  known  as 
Donatists.  The  African  Church  was  distracted  by  this 
faction,  and  Constantine,  intervening  on  behalf  of  public 
order,  took  action  against  it  as  a  champion  of  Catholicism. 
The  decision  of  a  synod,  held  by  his  order  at  Rome  in 
October  a.d.  313,  did  not  prevent  the  Donatists  from 
appealing  to  a  council  of  all  the  bishops  of  the  West. 
Some  four  hundred  bishops  met  at  Aries  in  A.D.  314, 
among  them  those  of  York,  London,  and  Lincoln,  and, 
while  reaffirming  the  innocence  of  Csecilian,  agreed  that 
any  of  the  clergy  whom  the  acta  puhlica  of  an  official 
might  prove  to  be  a  traditor,  should  be  degraded.  A 
further  appeal  to  Constantine  resulted  two  years  later  in 
a  violent  attack  on  the  Donatists,  who  were  banished  and 
excluded  from  their  churches.  Thus,  before  the  State 
had  been  four  years  at  peace  with  the  Church,  the  civil 
power  presumed  to  fight  the  battles  of  orthodoxy.  Con- 
stantine's  aim  was  simply  the  repression  of  disorder ;  but 
by  making  martyrs  of  the  Donatists  he  did  bad  service 
to  the  Church,  and  gave  such  a  stimulus  to  Donatism  that 
it  aflfected  the  African  Church  for  more  than  a  century, 
and  only  the  commanding  genius  of  Augustine,  combined 
with  stringent  measures  of  persecution,  availed  to  crush 
it  into  insignificance. 


CHAPTER  X 

THE    COUNCIL    OP    NIC^A 

Growing  supremacy  of  Constantine,  A.D.  314-324. — The 
alliance  between  Constantine  and  Licinius  was  soon  dis- 
solved by  mutual  jealousy  and  suspicion.  In  814  it  was 
broken  by  open  war.  Constantine  was  content  to  prove 
his  superior  strength  and  renew  the  compact ;  but 
Licinius,  who  had  never  been  a  friend  to  toleration, 
began  to  persecute  the  Church  once  more  in  319.  Con- 
stantine could  not  allow  the  unity  of  the  empire  to  be 
menaced  by  a  policy  so  alien  from  his  own  ;  he  therefore 
prepared  for  a  decisive  conflict,  defeated  Licinius  in  323, 
and  put  him  to  death  in  324. 

The  rise  of  Arianism,  A.D.  318. — As  soon  as  his  supremacy 
was  assured,  Constantine  found  that  a  doctrinal  con- 
troversy was  dividing  the  Eastern  Church  into  factions. 
The  Alexandrian  presbyter  Arius  had  in  318  accused  his 
bishop  Alexander  of  heresy.  Alexander  had  publicly 
emphasised,  in  opposition  to  Arius,  the  essential  unity 
and  co-equal  glory  of  the  Son  and  the  Father.  Arius 
had  inherited  from  his  teacher,  Lucian  of  Antioch,  and 
now  developed,  a  different  interpretation  of  the  words 
'  Son  of  God.'  He  asserted  that  a  '  son '  means  one  who 
derives  his  being  from  a  father,  but  did  not  exist  before 
his  father  gave  him  being.  Therefore  if  the  Son  of  God  is 
a  true  Son,  there  must  have  been  a  time  when  he  did  not 
exist.  The  Father  must  have  created  Him  out  of  non- 
existence ;  and  although  we  worship  Him  as  unique  among 
created  beings,  yet  He  is  a  creature,  and  not  '  truly  God  ' 
in  the  sense  in  which  the  Father  is  ^  truly  God.' 

The  antecedents  of  Arianism.  — This  doctrine,  propagated 
by  skilful  logic  and  backed  by  the  popularity  of  the 
dignified  ascetic  Arius,  was  not  absolutely  new.  The 
118 


THE   COUNCIL  OF  NICiEA  119 

Church  had  worshipped  our  Lord  as  God  from  the 
beginning  ;  but  as  soon  as  men  began  to  think  out  their 
religion  and  express  it  in  a  theology,  the  question  arose, 
How  can  belief  in  the  Divinity  of  Christ  be  harmonised 
with  belief  in  the  Unity  of  God?  Broadly  speaking, 
there  were  two  main  types  of  answer.  On  the  one  hand 
stood  the  true  inheritors  of  the  theology  of  S.  John, 
the  apologists,  Irenaeus,  Tertullian,  and  Origen,  who 
asserted  that  there  are  essential  and  eternal  distinctions 
within  the  Godhead.  They  believed  that  the  Word  was 
eternally  God,  at  one  with  the  Father,  and  deriving  His 
Divinity  from  the  Father.  These  writers  use  many 
metaphors  to  picture  the  idea  of  derivation  without 
division.  As  a  ray  of  light  comes  from  the  sun  but  is 
not  separated  from  it,  or  as  a  stream  from  a  spring,  or  a 
branch  from  a  root,  so  the  Son  is  from  the  Father  and  yet 
at  one  with  Him.  Unfortunately  some  of  the  apologists, 
and  Origen  himself,  were  not  always  clear  and  consistent. 
They  laid  such  stress  upon  the  fact  that  the  Divinity  of 
the  Son  is  derived  from  that  of  the  Father,  that  they 
sometimes  exaggerated  the  subordination  of  the  Son  to 
the  Father. 

On  the  other  side,  there  were  thinkers  whose  theology 
was  far  less  Scriptural.  They  believed  that  the  undivided 
sovereignty  of  God  the  Father  was  to  be  maintained, 
even  at  the  risk  of  denying  the  true  Divinity  of  the 
Son.  These  MonarchianB  were  of  two  types.  The  first, 
represented  by  Sabellius,  taught  that  the  Father,  Son, 
and  Spirit  are  only  three  aspects  of  the  One  God. 
The  second,  represented  by  Paul  of  Samosata,  held 
that  the  impersonal  Reason  or  Word  of  God  which  in- 
spired the  prophets  had  also  inspired  Jesus  Christ,  only 
in  a  higher  measure.  He  had  thus  attained  such  a  per- 
fection of  holiness  that  He  Mas  adopted  by  God,  and 
might  be  called — what  essentially  He  was  not— Son  of 
God.  This  '  Adoptionist '  Monarchianism  was  taken  up 
by  Lucian  of  Antioch,  who  himself  taught  Arius. 

Now  the  teaching  of  Arius,  though  new  in  form.,  drew 
its  main  elements  from  two  opposed  types  of  previous 
thought.  His  radical  principle  came  from  the  Adop- 
tionist Monarchians ;  for  his  idea  of  God,  like  theirs, 


120    CHURCH    HISTORY   TO   A.D.    325 

was  the  pagan  idea  of  a  being  infinitely  remote  from  the 
created  world.  But  the  machinery  by  which  this  idea 
was  worked  out  came  from  the  workshop  of  Origen. 
Origen  had  emphasised  the  '^subordination'  of  the 
Eternal  Son ;  Arius  used  the  idea  of  subordination  in 
order  to  show  that  the  Son  is  not  eternal.  Origen  had 
spoken  of  the  Father  as  6  6e6s,  and  of  the  Son  as  Beos  ; 
Arius  removed  the  subtlety  of  the  distinction  and  denied 
that  the  Son  is  ^ truly  God.' 

The  struggle  against  Arianism. — Arius  soon  found  con- 
siderable support  in  his  opposition  to  Alexander  among 
theologians,  because  he  posed  as  their  defender  against 
Sabellianism ;  among  common  Christians,  because  his 
explanation  of  the  term  'Son'  appealed  to  common- 
sense  ;  and  among  recent  converts  from  paganism,  because 
his  conception  of  Christ  as  a  kind  of  demi-god  was  in 
fact  a  Christian  paganism.  Through  a  doctrinal  poem 
called  Thalia  and  a  series  of  songs,  which  Arius  wrote 
'  for  sailors,  wayfarers,  and  millers,'  the  Arian  catchwords 
found  their  way  into  common  speech.  In  a.d.  821 
Alexander  followed  up  his  personal  remonstrances  by 
summoning  a  synod  of  Egyptian  and  Libyan  bishops, 
which  deposed  Arius  and  his  clerical  friends,  among 
whom  were  Secundus  and  Theonas,  two  bishops  from 
Libya.  But  Arius  had  other  supporters,  notably  his 
fellow-pupil  Eusebius,  Bishop  of  Nicomedia ;  and  after 
his  deposition  he  left  Alexandria  for  Palestine,  where 
Eusebius  of  Csesarea  (the  historian)  was  not  without 
sympathy  for  his  views.  While  Arius  was  visiting  the 
two  Eusebii,  Alexander  was  sending  letters  far  and  wide 
to  warn  the  Church  against  him.  Eusebius  of  Nicomedia 
replied  by  a  similar  series,  which  was  backed  by  a  synod 
held  in  the  imperial  city.  The  Church  was  now  a  babel 
of  controversy ;  and  at  Alexandria,  in  a.d.  322,  a  schism 
was  started  by  one  Colluthus,  an  anti-Arian  presbyter, 
who  thought  Alexander's  policy  culpably  weak.  Alex- 
ander's best  ally  was  the  young  deacon  Athanasius,  who 
had  already  written  'on  the  Incarnation  of  God  the 
Word,*  and  now  apparently  put  together  a  vigorous 
account  of  the  synod  of  a.d.  321  for  general  circulation. 

Constantine  interferes,  A.D.  324. — At  the  beginning  of 


THE   COUNCIL  OF  NICiEA  121 

A.D.  824  the  emperor  thought  fit  to  intervene,  prompted 
by  the  same  motive  which  had  led  him  to  combat  the 
Donatists — the  fear  lest  a  divided  Church  should  become 
a  menace  to  the  unity  of  his  empire.  Constantino  was 
not  a  Christian.  He  had  inherited  from  his  father  a 
belief  in  one  god,  namely  the  sun-god  Mithras,  whose 
token  appeared  on  his  coinage  till  about  a.d.  317.  As 
a  monotheist,  he  could  defend,  patronise,  and  enrich  the 
Church ;  but  neither  the  creed  nor  the  morality  of 
Christians  appealed  to  him  with  any  convincing  force. 
The  man  who  stamped  out  the  dynasty  of  Licinius  by  the 
murder  of  the  young  Licinianus,  and  had  his  own  eldest 
son  Crispus  and  wife  Fausta  put  to  death ;  who  retained  the 
title  of  Pontifex  Maximus,  and  ordered  soothsayers  to  be 
consulted  when  public  buildings  were  struck  by  lightning, 
was  hardly  a  Christian  by  conviction.  It  is  true  that  he 
gravitated  towards  the  Church,  and  that  his  anti-pagan 
legislation  grew  more  and  more  stringent.  But  his  first 
personal  act  of  adherence  to  the  faith  was  not  made  till 
A.D.  337^  when  he  was  baptized  as  a  dying  man. 

The  proposed  Churcli  Council.  —  Naturally  enough, 
Constantino  saw  nothing  in  the  Arian  controversy  but 
a  trivial  difi'erence  about  words.  His  first  act  was  to 
send  Hosius,  Bishop  of  Cordova,  to  Alexandria  to  see 
that  peace  was  restored  between  disputants  who  really 
agreed,  as  he  thought,  on  all  essential  points.  Hosius 
returned  so  strongly  anti-Arian  that  the  emperor  began 
to  see  the  magnitude  of  the  dispute.  Determined  to 
bring  it  to  an  end,  he  summoned  the  bishops  of  the 
whole  Church  to  meet  in  council  at  Nicsea  in  Bithynia. 

The  origin  of  Church  Councils.  —  The  institution  of 
episcopal  synods  was  now  about  a  century  and  a  half 
old.  The  question  of  Montanism  and  the  controversy 
about  Easter  were  the  earliest  occasions  which  made  a 
federation  of  this  kind  necessary.  The  need  for  common 
action  recurred  so  often  that  it  was  soon  provided  for  by 
a  synodal  system.  Thus  Tertullian  speaks  of  synods 
regularly  held  in  Greece ;  and  in  the  middle  of  the  third 
century,  Firmilian  of  Cappadocia  says  that  there  they 
were  held  every  year.  The  organisation  of  these  local 
assemblies  made  it  necessary  to  determine  the  centre  to 


122    CHURCH    HISTORY   TO   A.  D.    326 

which  each  bishop  should  refer  his  difficulties.  At  the 
first  this  was  always  settled  by  local  convenience :  thus 
the  Paschal  question  was  discussed  by  the  bishops  oi 
Caesarea  and  Jerusalem  with  those  of  Tyre  and  Ptolemais ; 
and  as  late  as  the  middle  of  the  third  century,  we  find 
the  bishop  of  Iconium  acting-  with  those  of  Cappadocia, 
Galatia,  and  Cilicia.  But  a  natural  tendency  soon  began 
to  assimilate  the  ecclesiastical  to  the  civil  divisions  of  the 
empire ;  and  by  the  time  of  the  Nicene  Council,  the  civil 
metropolis  of  each  province  was  in  nearly  all  cases  its 
ecclesiastical  metropolis  also. 

The  disciplinary  questions  arising  out  of  the  persecu- 
tion had  already  led  to  several  important  councils  :  the 
Spanish  bishops  had  met  at  Elvira  in  a.d.  305,  those  of 
Asia  Minor  and  Syria  at  Ancyra  in  a.d.  314  and  at  Neo- 
Caesarea  a  year  or  two  later,  and  the  emperor  had 
summoned  a  general  council  of  western  bishops  to 
Aries  in  a.d.  314.  But  the  Nicene  Council  was  a  new 
departure :  it  was  intended  to  represent  the  whole 
Church,  and  although  not  more  than  six  western  sees 
are  known  to  have  been  represented,  it  probably  did 
represent  the  whole  area  which  the  dogmatic  dispute  had 
affected.  The  traditional  number  of  bishops  present  is 
318 :  there  were  certainly  more  than  250. 

The  Council  of  Nicsea,  A.D.  325. — The  council  was  sum- 
moned for  June  19,  325.  After  some  preliminary 
meetings  in  the  cathedral  church,  the  formal  session 
was  opened  by  the  emperor  in  the  palace.  He  appeared 
in  royal  splendour,  was  welcomed  by  Eusebius  of 
Caesarea  in  a  courtly  speech,  replied  in  Latin,  and  then 
left  the  council  to  its  work,  probably  under  the  presi- 
dency of  Eustathius,  Bishop  of  Antioch.  The  sessions 
lasted  till  the  25th  of  August.  The  twenty  canons  which 
were  passed  decided  some  minor  points  of  precedence, 
discipline,  and  usage  :  for  instance,  the  sixth  secured  to 
the  bishop  of  Alexandria  his  traditional  jurisdiction  over 
the  Churches  of  Egypt,  Libya,  and  Pentapolis,  as  being 
parallel  to  the  large  Italian  jurisdiction  of  the  bishop  of 
Rome.  The  council  also  decreed  that  Easter  should 
always  be  kept  on  the  Sunday  following  the  next  full 
moon  after  the  21st  of  March,  and  offered  a  liberal  com- 


THE   COUNCIL  OF  NIC^A  123 

promise  to  the  followers  of  one  Meletius_,  an  Egyptian 
bishop  who  had  organised  a  schism  like  that  of  the 
Donatists.  But  the  main  concern  of  the  session  was  with 
the  Arian  controversy ;  and  here  a  result  was  reached 
which  few  members  of  the  council  could  have  foreseen. 

The  proposed  creed. — The  majority  of  the  council  were 
doubtless  prepared  for  a  compromise.  They  were  not 
Arians ;  and  when  Eusebius  of  Nicomedia  asked  them  to 
accept  an  Arianising  expression  of  belief,  they  repulsed 
him  with  indignation.  Yet  they  were  not  of  Athanasius' 
mind,  and  they  would  have  preferred  to  endorse  some 
simple  formula  by  which  the  Divinity  of  Christ  might  be 
guarded  without  an  express  condemnation  of  Arianism. 
The  leader  of  this  pacific  majority,  Eusebius  of  Csesarea, 
came  forward  with  a  formula  which  seemed  likely  to 
accomplish  this— the  baptismal  creed  of  his  own  church 
of  Csesarea, 

The  origin  of  creeds, — Baptism  had  from  the  earliest 
age  been  preceded  by  a  confession  of  faith.  The  oral 
delivery  of  this  creed  or  '  password '  to  the  catechumen, 
and  the  recitation  by  which  he  owned  his  belief  in  it 
{traditio  and  redditio  symboli),  formed  the  last  stage  in  his 
preparation.  The  varying  ^symbols'  used  by  different 
churches  were  all  based  on  the  baptismal  formula  of 
S.  Matthew  xxviii.  19 ;  but  from  the  second  century 
onwards  there  was  a  constant  tendency  to  adapt  and 
expand  the  form  of  creed  so  as  to  guard  against  heretical 
misconceptions.  Thus  the  influence  of  Gnosticism  on  the 
old  Roman  creed  (the  ancestor  of  our  ^Apostles'  creed') 
was  traceable  in  the  phrases  'one  God'  and  'maker  of 
heaven  and  earth.'  In  the  east,  the  pressure  of  con- 
troversy led  to  a  fuller  expansion  of  disputed  clauses. 

The  creed  of  Eusebius  of  Csesarea. — The  creed  which 
Eusebius  presented  to  the  Nicene  Council  was  of  this 
expanded  character,  and  ran  as  follows  :  *  We  believe  in 
one  God,  the  Father  Almighty,  Maker  of  all  things, 
both  visible  and  invisible ;  and  in  one  Lord  Jesus  Christ, 
the  Word  of  God,  God  of  (from)  God,  Light  of  Light, 
Life  of  Life,  the  only-begotten  Son,  the  first-born  of  all 
creation,  begotten  of  the  Father  before  all  ages  ;  through 
whom  also  all  things  were  made ;  who  for  our  salvation 


124    CHURCH    HISTORY   TO   A.D.    825 

was  made  flesh  and  lived  among  men^  and  suflFered,  and 
rose  again  the  third  day,  and  ascended  to  the  Father,  and 
shall  come  again  in  glory,  to  judge  the  living  and  dead  ; 
and  in  the  Holy  Spirit/ 

The  creed  revised. — If  this  creed  had  been  accepted  as 
it  stood,  the  council  would  have  met  in  vain  :  there  was 
no  clause  in  it  which  all  parties  could  not  in  some  sense 
accept.  Athanasius  and  his  party,  convinced  that  vital 
questions  were  at  stake,  determined  that  the  council 
should  pronounce  on  a  definite  issue.  They  therefore 
stood  out  for  the  acceptance  of  the  creed  in  a  revised 
form,  and  the  insertion  of  phrases  which  the  Arians  could 
not  evade.  The  debate  turned  on  the  insertion  of  one 
famous  word,  homoousion.  An  Arian  might  hold  that 
the  Son  is  of  like  essence  (homoiousios)  with  the  Father : 
to  confess  Him  of  one  essence  with  the  Father  was  to 
assert  that  He  shares  with  Him  that  which  no  created 
being,  however  exalted,  could  share.  Both  at  the  council 
and  in  later  disputes  the  word  homoousion  was  keenly 
opposed,  and  that  chiefly  on  two  grounds  :  (1)  that  it 
was  not  Scriptural ;  (2)  that  a  synod  of  Antioch  in  a.  d, 
269  had  condemned  its  use  by  Paul  of  Samosata.  The 
defence  in  later  days  (for  the  debate  at  Nicsea  is  not 
recorded)  was  that  it  expressed  the  mind  of  Scripture, 
and  that  Paul  of  Samosata  had  used  it  in  an  obviously 
heretical  sense.  The  debate  in  the  end  forced  the  middle 
party  to  choose  between  a  virtual  acquittal  of  Arius  and 
the  ratification  of  a  creed  which  they  suspected  and  dis- 
liked. They  chose  the  latter  alternative  :  the  revised 
form  of  the  Caesarean  creed  asserted  that  the  Son  of  God 
is  '  only  -  begotten,  that  is,  from  the  essence  of  the 
Father'  —  'begotten,  not  made,  being  of  one  essence 
(homoousion)  with  the  Father ' ;  and  at  the  end  the 
following  abjuration  was  added:  'But  those  who  say 
that  "  there  was  once  a  time  when  He  was  not,"  and 
''before  He  was  begotten  He  was  not,"  and  "He  was 
made  of  things  that  were  not,"  or  maintain  that  the 
Son  of  God  is  of  a  diff'erent  essence  (from  the  Father),  or 
is  a  created  being,  or  liable  to  (moral)  change, — these  the 
Catholic  and  Apostolic  Church  declares  to  be  anathema.' 

The  defeat  of  Arianism. — Arius'  two  friends,  Secundua 


THE  COUNCIL  OF  NIC^A  126 

and  Theonas,  refused  to  sign  this  creed.  Eusebius  of 
Caesarea  had  grave  scruples,  as  his  almost  apologetic 
letter  to  his  people  shows ;  in  the  end  he  submitted  to 
explanations,  and  signed.  The  emperor's  policy  had 
succeeded  so  far  :  the  Church  had  spoken  its  mind,  and 
Constantine  enforced  its  decision  by  sending  Arius, 
Secundus,  and  Theonas  into  exile.  Three  causes  con- 
tributed to  the  decision  of  Nicsea ;  the  will  of  the  em- 
peror, who  desired  a  definite  result  for  the  sake  of  peace; 
the  readiness  of  the  moderates  to  suppress  the  extreme 
Arians  at  any  cost ;  and  the  strong  conviction  of  Athan- 
asius  and  his  few  followers,  who  knew  that  the  homoousion 
was  the  only  possible  safeguard  for  the  apostolic  faith. 
But  Athanasius  was  ahead  of  his  age,  and  was  destined 
to  suffer  persecution  and  repeated  exile  for  his  convic- 
tions;  for  the  moderates  were  soon  carried  away  by  a 
strong  Arian  reaction,  and  the  emperor  was  always  pre- 
pared to  oppress  what  seemed  to  be  the  losing  side. 

The  Church  and  the  world. — With  the  year  a.d.  325 
our  period  ends ;  yet  it  is  in  hardly  any  sense  the  end 
of  an  epoch.  The  first  age  of  the  Church  ended  with 
the  edict  of  Milan.  Christianity  then  exchanged  the 
mingled  good  and  evil  of  persecution  for  the  dangerous 
privilege  of  imperial  support;  and  under  the  new  con 
ditions  every  department  of  Church  life  took  a  new 
start.  The  churches  which  Diocletian  had  destroyed 
were  restored  with  new  splendour  by  Constantine,  and 
art  in  all  its  forms  began  to  be  employed  for  the  enrich- 
ment of  worship.  As  the  Church  came  out  openly  into 
the  world,  a  natural  reaction  created  the  monastic  move- 
ment ;  it  seemed  a  '  counsel  of  perfection  to  leave  a 
life  in  which  it  was  hard  to  be  unworldly.  The  intel- 
lectual life  of  the  Church  also  underwent  a  change : 
doctrinal  disputes  became  more  subtle  and  more  technical 
in  themselves,  and  more  closely  involved  with  secular 
interests.  Arianism  and  the  Nicene  Council  belong 
wholly  to  this  second  period,  in  which  doctrinal  develop- 
ment was  no  longer  an  entirely  spontaneous  movement 
of  thought,  but  was  guided  by  the  decisions  of  Church 
councils,  and  complicated  by  its  new  relation  to  imperial 
politics. 


CHAPTER  XI 

THE    CHURCH    CALENDAR 

The  Christian  Calendar  is  an  enduring  monument  of  the 
Jewish  origin  of  the  Church.  It  has  three  elements : 
(1)  The  division  of  the  year  into  weeks,  with  special 
observances  attached  to  certain  days  in  each  week ;  (2) 
the  movable  feast  of  Easter,  with  other  days  of  observ- 
ance dependent  upon  it ;  and  (3)  the  fixed  annual  com- 
memorations of  persons  or  events.  The  third  of  these 
has  its  analogies  in  such  Jewish  festivals  as  Purim  ;  the 
other  two  are  directly  derived  from  Jewish  usages  which 
the  Church  took  over  and  adopted  from  the  first. 

The  Christian  Week. — The  Jewish  law  required  the 
observance  of  the  seventh  day  (from  Friday  evening  till 
Saturday  at  sunset)  as  a  religious  festival  and  a  time  of 
unbroken  rest.  Custom  also  added  religious  significance 
to  the  second  and  fifth  days  (Monday  and  Thursday)  as 
days  of  fasting.  The  Christian  week  preserved  an  exactly 
similar  outline,  with  two  difi*erences  of  detail ;  the 
Lord's  Day  soon  came,  through  the  influence  of  the 
Gentile  Churches,  to  supplant  the  Sabbath ;  and  the 
weekly  fasts  were  moved  to  Wednesday  and  Friday. 

The  Observance  of  the  Lord's  Day. — During  our  period 
there  was  no  confusion  between  the  Lord's  Day  and  the 
Sabbath.  The  Christian  Sunday  was  a  memorial  of  the 
Resurrection — a  weekly  Easter,  prescribed  by  Church 
usage  only,  and  in  no  way  related  to  the  fourth  com- 
mandment. Tertullian  is  the  first  wi'iter  who  refers  to 
abstention  from  work  on  the  Lord's  Day.  In  his  day  it 
was  already  usual  to  mark  the  festal  character  of  Sunday 
by  standing  during  prayer,  a  custom  which  was  made 
obligatory  by  the  Nicene  Council.  Tertullian  says  that 
126 


THE   CHURCH   CALENDAR  127 

there  are  some  who  cause  scandal  by  standing  to  pray  on 
the  Sabbath  also  ;  '  but  we  ought,  as  tradition  teaches_,  to 
refrain  from  kneeling  on  the  Lord's  Day  alone,  and  not 
from  kneeling  only,  but  also  from  all  anxious  occupa- 
tions, postponing  even  our  business,  that  we  may  give 
no  opportunity  to  the  devil.'  Early  writers  are  not 
silent  as  to  the  Decalogue,  but  they  never  hint  that  the 
keeping  of  Sunday  fulfils  the  Jewish  ceremonial  law. 
They  maintain  the  Divine  origin  of  that  law  as  against 
the  Gnostics  and  Marcionites,  but  they  never  single 
out  any  part  of  it  as  still  retaining  its  literal  force. 
Thus  their  attitude  to  the  Sabbath  is  the  same  as  their 
attitude  to  circumcision ;  the  Church,  they  say,  knows 
only  the  spiritual  circumcision  of  the  heart  and  the 
spiritual  Sabbath.  This  spiritual  Sabbath  is,  however, 
not  the  Christian  Lord's  Day ;  it  is  not  a  day  at  all,  but 
a  perpetual  Sabbath,  a  ^rest  for  the  people  of  God,'  a 
rest  which  comes  from  the  consecration  of  every  day  to 
Him. 

Legislation  of  Constantine. — At  the  end  of  our  period 
a  new  development  began.  Constantine  issued  an  edict 
in  A.D.  321  ordering  that  the  'venerable  day  of  the  Sun' 
should  be  kept  as  a  civil  holiday,  marked  by  the  sus- 
pension of  all  business.  A  special  exemption  was  granted 
to  farmers,  to  whom  the  omission  of  a  Sunday's  work 
might  mean  serious  loss.  It  is  probable  that  the  motive 
of  this  measure,  as  of  Constantino's  policy  in  general, 
was  not  purely  or  primarily  Christian.  The  expression 
'  day  of  the  Sun '  reminds  us  of  the  Emperor's  early  de- 
votion to  the  sun-god  Mithras.  But  it  seems  that  as 
Constantine  became  more  nearly  attached  to  the  Church, 
a  series  of  minor  edicts  made  it  plain  that  he  wished  to 
present  the  Church  as  such  with  a  day  of  rest ;  according 
to  Eusebius  he  also  made  provision  for  the  observance  of 
Friday.  The  new  law  became  far  more  stringent  under 
Constantino's  successors;  and  although  some  Church 
councils  withstood  the  growth  of  Judaistic  ideas,  the 
legal  enforcement  of  Sunday  rest  gave  such  prominence 
to  this  one  aspect  of  the  Lord's  Day  that  Churchmen 
drifted  by  association  into  more  '^  Sabbatarian '  views. 
Thus  it  is  from  fourth  century  writers  that  we  first  hear 


128    CHURCH    HISTORY    TO  A.D.    326 

of  Sunday  as  substituted  for  the  Sabbath  by  Christ's 
institution^  or  of  the  weekly  rest  as  an  obligation  handed 
on  to  the  Church  from  the  Mosaic  law. 

Sunday  Worsliip. — Although  the  persecution  of  Diocle- 
tian by  destroying  Christian  service-books  did  much  to 
obliterate  the  early  history  of  liturgies,  yet  the  surviving 
evidence  enables  us  to  trace  at  least  the  outlines  of 
ante-Nicene  worship,  and  shows  that  in  all  essentials  it  was 
identical  with  the  developed  liturgy  of  the  fourth  century. 
Thus  in  Justin  Martyr  {First  Apology,  65-67)  we  have  a 
description  of  the  services  in  use  in  the  middle  of  the 
second  century.  The  Church  met,  we  are  told,  on 
Sunday ;  its  service,  which  consisted  of  two  parts,  began 
with  the  reading  of  ^  the  memoirs  of  the  apostles  or  the 
writings  of  the  prophets,'  followed  by  a  homily  from  the 
'  president '  ^  and  a  prayer.  Next,  bread  and  wine  and 
water  were  brought :  over  these  the  president  oiFered 
prayers  and  thanksgivings,  to  which  the  people  answered 
Amen  ;  all  who  were  present  then  received  the  bread  and 
wine  as  '  the  flesh  and  blood  of  that  Jesus  Who  was  made 
flesh,'  and  a  portion  of  the  Eucharist  (Justin  uses  the  name) 
was  taken  by  the  deacons  to  those  who  were  absent. 
The  president  also  received  the  offerings  of  the  Church 
on  behalf  of  all  who  were  in  need.  Justin  speaks  of 
this  service  of  '  prayers  and  thanksgiving '  as  the  Chris- 
tian ^sacrirtce'  by  which  the  Jewish  sacrifices  are  super- 
seded. The  outline  given  by  him  can  be  supplemented 
from  the  Canons  of  Hippolytus,  a  document  probably  sent 
to  Hippolytus  by  Dionysius  of  Alexandria  early  in  the 
third  century.  In  these  we  find  the  earliest  trace  of  a 
special  dress  for  ministrants  :  '  When  the  bishop  wishes 
to  partake  of  the  mysteries,  let  the  deacons  and  presby- 
ters be  assembled  with  him,  clad  in  white  garments 
more  beautiful  than  those  of  the  people,  and  splendid  if 
possible  (but  good  works  are  better  than  any  clothing) . 
let  the  readers  also  have  festal  vestments.'  The 
Eucharist  still  has  two  parts,  one  accessible  to  catechu- 
mens, the  other  reserved  for  the  faithful  or  baptized  :  it 
begins  with  the  readings  from  Scripture  and  a  sermon, 

1  Justin  uses  the  word  'president'  rather  than   'bishop'    in 
order  to  be  understood  by  heathen  readers. 


THE   CHURCH    CALENDAR  129 

and  the  ^  mass  of  the  faithful '  includes  the  kiss  or  peace 
(mentioned  in  Justin),  the  bringing  of  the  oblations  by 
the  deacon  to  the  bishop,  who  ^  with  the  presbyters' 
offers  them,  and  the  offering  of  firstfruits  of  the  earth 
at  certain  seasons.  In  this  service  we  also  find  the 
responses,  'The  Lord  be  with  you — And  with  thy  spirit  : 
Lift  up  your  hearts — We  have  lifted  them  up  unto  the 
Lord  :  Let  us  give  thanks  unto  the  Lord — It  is  meet 
and  right. '  The  form  of  words  used  in  giving  the  holy 
sacrament  to  the  communicants  was,  '  This  is  the  Body 
of  Christ'—'  This  is  the  Blood  of  Christ.'  To  each  the 
communicant  replied  Amen. 

The  Fasts  of  Wednesday  and  Friday. — That  the  observ- 
ance of  two  weekly  fasts  was  a  very  early  usage  is 
shown  by  the  Didache,  where  we  find  the  injunction  : 
'  Let  not  your  fasts  be  with  the  hypocrites  {i.e.  the  Jews), 
for  they  fast  on  the  second  and  the  fifth  day  of  the 
week ;  but  do  ye  fast  on  the  fourth  day  and  on  the 
preparation.'  Another  trace  of  the  custom  is  found  in  the 
Shepherd  of  Hermas,  where  the  military  name  'station,' 
i.e.  'mounting  guard,'  is  first  applied  to  the  fast.  The 
angel  finds  Hermas  keeping  a  '  station,'  and  shows  him 
that  the  observance  is  in  itself  vain,  unless  it  is  accom- 
panied by  the  inward  discipline  of  a  pure  heart ;  he  also 
recommends  him  to  spend  in  almsgiving  whatever  his 
fasting  diet  of  bread  and  water  may  enable  him  to  save. 
The  meaning  of  the  Friday  fast  and  its  relation  to  the 
Sunday  festival  are  obvious,  but  the  special  prominence 
given  to  Wednesday  is  hard  to  understand.  It  was 
commonly  said  (e.g.  by  S.  Augustine)  that  this  fast 
commemorated  the  planning  of  our  Lord's  betrayal. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  third  century  it  was  customary 
to  fast  on  these  days  till  three  in  the  afternoon ;  the 
fast  was  ended  in  some  places  (though  not  at  Rome  or 
Alexandria)  by  a  celebration  of  the  Eucharist.  The 
Montanists  wished  to  increase  the  rigour  of  this  usage ; 
they  prolonged  the  fast  into  the  evening,  and  regarded 
it  as  a  matter  of  compulsory  discipline,  enjoined  by  the 
new  revelations  of  the  Paraclete. 

The  Christian  Year — Easter. — To  the  first  Christians 
the  yearly  recurrence  of  the  Passover  must  have  brought 
I 


130    CHURCH    HISTORY    TO  A.D     326 

vivid  memories  of  all  that  had  happened  at  the  Passover 
of  A.D.  29.  These  associations  soon  gave  a  Christian 
meaning  to  the  very  word  Pascha.  '  Christ  our  Pascha 
is  sacrificed  for  us/  wrote  S.  Paul ;  and  the  Sacrifice 
and  Resurrection^  remembered  at  first,  perhaps,  together 
with  the  night  of  the  Exodus,  soon  became  the  chief  and 
only  reason  for  observing  the  Feast  of  Unleavened  Bread. 
The  keeping  of  Easter  must  have  been  universal  at  a 
very  early  date ;  the  Jewish  associations  of  its  origin 
seem  not  to  have  interfered  with  its  perpetuation  among 
Gentile  Christians.  In  one  chief  point,  indeed,  the  usage 
of  the  Church  made  a  complete  departure  from  its 
Judaic  prototype;  the  Jewish  Paschal  meal  was  the 
beginning  of  a  fast ;  the  Christian  Pascha  included  and 
culminated  in  the  festival  of  the  Resurrection,  which 
was  followed  by  a  festal  period  lasting  till  Pentecost. 

The  Paschal  Controversy. — In  the  middle  of  the  second 
century,  when  communication  between  distant  Churches 
was  constant,  it  was  noticed  that  the  Churches  of  pro- 
consular Asia  difi'ered  from  all  others  in  their  observance 
of  Easter.  The  general  rule  was  that  the  Crucifixion 
should  be  commemorated  on  a  Friday,  and  the  Resur- 
rection on  the  following  Sunday ;  the  Friday  chosen 
was  that  which  followed  the  14th  of  Nisan  in  the  Jewish 
Calendar.  In  Asia,  on  the  other  hand,  the  Crucifixion 
and  Resurrection  were  commemorated  together  on  Nisan 
14th,  whatever  day  of  the  week  that  might  happen  to 
be.  This  difference  of  usage  was  discussed  by  Polycarp 
and  Anicetus  at  Rome  in  a.  d.  ]  54.  Neither  would  consent 
to  give  up  the  ancient  tradition  of  his  Church,  but  the 
friendship  of  the  two  bishops  remained  undisturbed. 
Not  long  after  a.d.  160  a  new  divergence  appeared: 
some  Asiatics,  holding  that  our  Lord  ate  the  Passover 
on  the  night  of  His  betrayal,  urged  that  the  Church 
ought  still  to  observe  that  feast  with  Jewish  rites.  This 
view  was  combated  by  such  eminent  men  as  Melito  and 
Apollinaris,  both  of  whom  were  '  Quarto-decimans ' 
{i.e.  ^observers  of  the  14th  day'),  as  also  by  Clement 
of  Alexandria,  who  disagreed  with  them  in  that.  Per- 
haps it  was  the  introduction  of  the  new  Judaising  usage 
into  Rome  by  Blastus  that  led  the  Roman  bishop  Victor 


THE   CHURCH   CALENDAR  131 

to  intervene.  Victor  wished  the  whole  question  to  be 
set  at  rest :  on  his  suggestion  synods  were  called  in 
Asia^  Palestine^  Pontus  and  Gaul^  as  well  as  in  Rome. 
The  Asiatic  use  was  everywhere  condemned ;  and 
although  Victor's  attempt  to  excommunicate  the  recal- 
citrant Asiatics  was  a  false  step^  it  is  probable  that  from 
this  time  onwards  the  custom  of  keeping  Easter  on  a 
Sunday  became  practically  universal. 

A  second  Paschal  controversy  was  settled  by  the 
Council  of  Nicaea.  The  most  important  point  in  this 
controversy  was  that  the  Church  of  Antioch  followed 
the  Jews  in  keeping  the  Paschal  feast  on  Nisan  14,  pro- 
vided the  day  was  a  Sunday.  The  Council  condemned 
this  as  ^too  Jewish^'  and  determined  that  the  feast 
should  be  kept  everywhere  on  the  same  day  as  at  Rome 
and  Alexandria  (see  above,  p.  122). 

Lent. — At  the  Council  of  Nicaea  we  first  hear  the  ex- 
pression reaaapaKoaTr)  {  =  quadragesima)  applied  to  the 
period  preceding  Easter.  These  forty  days  were  then 
understood  to  be  a  kind  of  penitential  period,  having 
special  relation  to  the  preparation  of  catechumens  for 
baptism  and  of  penitents  for  restoration  :  as  applied  to 
a  period  of  continuous  fasting  the  word  is  not  so  old. 
Some  kind  of  fast  certainly  preceded  Easter  in  the 
second  century ;  but  the  usage  of  the  Montanists,  who 
fasted  during  two  separate  weeks,  except  on  Saturday 
and  Sunday,  seems  to  have  been  thought  exceptionally 
rigorous.  Irenseus,  indeed,  deprecates  Victor's  in- 
sistence on  unity  of  observance  for  the  express  reason 
that  the  Lenten  fast  was  quite  indeterminate.  '  Some/ 
he  says,  ^fast  for  one  day,  others  for  two  days,  others 
for  several,  while  some  keep  a  continuous  fast  of  forty 
hours,  day  and  night.'  This  last  custom  seems  to  have 
been  widely  diifused  ;  the  forty  hours  represented  'the 
days  in  which  the  bridegroom  was  taken  away,'  that  ii-, 
the  period  between  the  Crucifixion  and  the  Resurrection. 

The  Epiphany. — A  Roman  calendar  of  the  year  a.d.  33(3 
gives  the  25th  of  December  as  the  day  on  which  the 
Nativity  of  our  Lord  was  celebrated.  But  the  observance 
of  Christmas  as  a  separate  festival  was  purely  western 
in  origin,  and  it  cannot  be  definitely  traced  before  thf 


132    CHURCH    HISTORY   TO    A.D.    325 

fourth  century.  The  eastern  Church  had^  however,  an 
older  festival,  that  of  the  '  Epiphanies '  or  Manifestations 
of  our  Lord,  which  was  kept  on  January  6th.  This 
feast  commemorated  (1)  the  Nativity,  (2)  the  Adoration 
of  the  Magi,  (3)  the  Baptism,  and  (4)  the  miracle  in 
Cana  of  Galilee.  It  was  as  unknown  to  the  west,  at 
least  till  the  middle  of  the  fourth  century,  as  was  that 
of  the  Nativity  alone  in  the  east.  After  that  time  both 
festivals  become  observed  in  both  parts  of  the  Church. 

The  original  motive  for  the  choice  of  these  two  dates 
is  obscure.  The  festal  observance  of  December  25,  to 
which  the  Nativity  was  assigned  by  Hippolytus  (about 
A.D.  230),  was  probably  not  quite  unconnected  with  the 
Pagan  festival  of  the  winter  solstice,  which  fell,  accord- 
ing to  the  Roman  Calendar,  on  that  day.  But  M. 
Duchesne  has  made  it  still  more  likely  that  both  dates 
are  derived  from  calculations  of  the  day  of  the  Cruci- 
fixion, combined  with  the  assumption  that  the  period 
between  the  Annunciation  and  our  Lord's  death  must 
have  filled  a  complete  number  of  years.  The  western 
date  for  the  Annunciation  is  March  25  :  this  was  also 
Hippolytus'  date  for  the  Crucifixion.  There  are  also 
traces  of  an  eastern  selection  of  April  6  for  the  Cruci- 
fixion. The  intervals  between  March  25  —December  25 
and  April  6 — January  6,  are  exactly  the  same ;  and  it 
seems  probable  that  they  had  their  origin  in  two  difi^erent 
applications  of  one  rather  fanciful  idea. 

Saints'  Days. — This  third  element  of  the  Calendar  grew 
from  the  early  practice  of  commemorating  the  death  of 
martyrs  every  year  on  the  day  on  which  they  had 
sufi^ered.  Thus  the  Smyrnaeans,  whose  letter  relates 
the  martyrdom  of  Polycarp  (a.d.  156),  express  the 
hope  that  the  Lord  will  permit  them  to  celebrate  the 
^birthday'  of  their  bishop  at  his  tomb  ;  and  a  century 
later,  the  arrest  of  other  martyrs  is  dated  as  occurring 
^  while  they  were  keeping  the  true  birthday  of  Polycarp.' 
Every  Church  had  its  own  list  of  such  commemorations  ; 
and  by  a  natural  process  of  assimilation  the  most  eminent 
names,  such  as  those  of  Cyprian  at  Carthage,  and  Laur- 
ence and  Xystus  at  Rome,  soon  acquired  more  than  local 
veneration. 


THE   CHURCH   CALENDAR  133 

As  early  as  a.d.  200,  the  Eucharist  was  offered  on  these 
days  of  remembrance.  Thus  TertuUian  says,  'We  make 
oblations  for  the  dead  every  year  in  memory  of  their 
"  birthdays." '  A  little  later,  Cyprian  mentions  the  read- 
ing of  honoured  names  at  the  Eucharist,  a  custom  which 
was  in  later  times  a  definite  part  of  the  service  ;  both 
the  living  and  the  dead  were  commemorated  in  the 
reading  of  the  tablets  (diptychs),  and  thus  the  great 
names  of  the  Church  had  a  perpetual  as  well  as  an 
annual  remembrance. 


CHRONOLOGICAL  TABLE 

Dates  which  can  only  be  given  approximately  are  marked 
with  an  asterisk. 

A.D. 

Tiberius,  Emperor, 14 

Crucifixion,  Resurrection,  and  Ascension  of  our  Lord,       .  29 

Conversion  of  S.  Paul, 35-36 

Gaius,  Emperor, 37 

Martyrdom  of  S.  James  the  Great, 44 

First  Missionary  Journey  of  S.  Paul,          ....  47 

Apostolic  Council  at  Jerusalem, 49 

Second  Journey  of  S.  Paul, 49-52 

1  and  2  Thessalonians, 52 

Third  Journey  of  S.  Paul, 52-56 

Nero,  Emperor, 54 

Galatians,  before 55 

1  and  2  Corinthians, 55 

Romans, 55-56 

Arrest  of  S.  Paul  at  Jerusalem, 56 

Journey  of  S.  Paul  to  Rome, 59-60 

Philippians,  Ephesians,  Colossians,  Philemon,  .        .        .  60-62 

Epistle  of  S.  James,  before 62 

Martyrdom  of  S.  James,  bishop  of  Jerusalem,  ...  62 

Release  of  S.  Paul, 62 

1  and  2  Timothy,  Titus, 63-65 

Fire  of  Rome :  Neronian  persecution,         ....  64 

Linus,  bishop  of  Rome, 67* 

Martyrdom  of  SS.  Peter  and  Paul,  before ....  67 

Vespasian,  Emperor, 69 

Birth  of  Polycarp, 70* 

Gospel  of  S.  Mark,  before 70 

134 


CHRONOLOGICAL   TABLE  135 

A..D. 

Fall  of  Jerusalem, •  70 

Anencletos,  bishop  of  Rome, 79* 

Titus,  Emperor, 79 

Gospel  of  S.  Luke  and  Acts,       ......  75-80* 

Gospel  of  S.  Matthew, 80* 

Domitian,  Emperor, 81 

Gospel  and  Epistles  of  S.  John,  ....         85-100* 

Apocalypse, 95* 

Nerva,  Emperor, 96 

Clement,  bishop  of  Rome  (Epistle  to  the  Corinthians),      .  97* 

Trajan,  Emperor, 98 

Epistles  and  Martyrdom  of  S.  Ignatius,     ....  110* 

Epistle  of  Polycarp, 110* 

Correspondence  of  Pliny  with  Trajan,        ....  112 

Jewish  revolts  in  Alexandria,  etc., 115 

Hadrian,  Emperor, 117 

Boginnings  of  Alexandrian  and  Syrian  Gnosticism,  .         .  120* 

Rescript  to  Minucius  Fundanus, 125 

Telesphorus,  bishop  of  Rome,  martyred,    ....  127* 

Apologies  of  Quadratus  and  Aristides,       ....  127* 

Papias  writes  Exposition  of  the  Oracles  of  the  Lord,          .  130* 

Revolt  of  Bar-Cochba, 131-135 

Antoninus  Pius,  Emperor, 138 

Valentinus  the  Gnostic  in  Rome, 140* 

Marcion  in  Rome, 145* 

Justin  in  Rome, 145* 

Hegesippus  in  Corinth  and  Rome, 150* 

Anicetus,  bishop  of  Rome, 150* 

First  Apology  of  Justin, 152 

Polycarp  visits  Rome, 154* 

Martyrdom  of  Polycarp, 156 

Beginnings  of  Montanism, 156* 

Marcus  Aurelius,  Emperor 161 

Martyrdom  of  Justin, 163* 

Melito  of  Sardis,  Apology, 175* 

Persecution  at  Lugdunum  and  Vienna,      ....  177 

Madauran  and  Scillitan  martyrs, 180 

Octavius  of  IMinucius  Felix, 180* 

Commodus,  Emperor 180 

Irenaeus,  Treatise  against  heresies,     .....  180 


136     CHURCH    HISTORY    TO    A.D.    325 

A.D. 

Origen,  born 185* 

Amnesty  to  exiled  confessors, 190 

Victor,  bishop  of  Rome, 192 

Septimius  Severus,  Emperor, 192 

Apologeticus  of  Tertullian, 197 

Zephyrinus,  bishop  of  Rome, 199 

Martyrdom  of  Perpetua  and  Felicitas,  ....  200 
Persecution  at  Alexandria,  Clement  forced  to  flee,  .  .  202 
Origen,  head  of  Catechetical  School  at  Alexandria,   .        .      203 

CaracaUa,  Emperor, 211 

First  Long  Peace  of  the  Church,         ....        211-250 

Callistus,  bishop  of  Rome, 217 

Urbanus,  bishop  of  Rome, .      222 

Alexander  Severus,  Emperor, 222 

Pontianus,  bishop  of  Rome, 230 

Origen  removes  from  Alexandria  to  Csesarea,  .  .  .  231 
Maximmus,  Emperor  (persecutor),  .        .        .        .235 

Hippolytus  and  Pontianus  go  into  exile,     ....      235 

Cyprian,  bishop  of  Carthage, 248 

Decius,  Emperor, 249 

Persecution  of  Decius, 250-251 

Fabian,  bishop  of  Rome,  martyred, 250 

Gallus,  Emperor, 251 

Persecution  of  Callus, 251-253 

Death  of  Origen, 253 

Valerian,  Emperor, 253 

Persecution  of  Valerian, 253-258 

Martyrdom  of  S.  Cyprian, 258 

GallienuB,  Emperor, 260 

Second  Long  Peace  of  the  Church,     ....        260-303 

Aurelian,  Emperor, 268 

Synods  dealing  with  Paul  of  Samosata,      .        .        .       209-273 

Diocletian,  Emperor, 284 

Purification  of  the  army  from  Christians,  ....      295 

Edicts  of  Persecution, 303 

Synod  of  Elvira, .305 

Abdication  of  Diocletian, 305 

End  of  Persecution  in  the  "West, 305 

Death  of  Constantius :  Constantine  made  Csesar,  .  .  306 
Renewed  Persecution  in  the  East,      ....        308-310 


CHRONOLOGICAL   TABLE  137 

A.D. 

Death  of  Galerius :  Edict  of  Toleration,    .        .        .        .311 

Outbreak  of  Donatism, 311 

Victory  of  Constantine  over  Maxentius,     ....  312 

Edict  of  Milan, 313 

Synods  of  Aries  and  Ancyra,      ..*...  314 

Beginnings  of  Arianism, 318 

Athanasius,  de  Incarnatione,  before .        «        •        .        .  321 

Supremacy  of  Constantine, 324 

Council  of  Nicsea,        .,«•••••  325 


INDEX 


Adoptionism,  119. 

Akiba,  Rabbi,  49. 

Alexander  of  Alexandria,  118,  120. 

Alexander  of  Jerusalem,  104. 

Alexander  Severus,  109. 

Alexandria,    Church  of,    loi  ff; 

Catechetical  School,  102. 
Ancyra,  Synod  of,  122. 
Anicetus,  83,  130. 
Antioch,  17,  78. 
Antoninus  Pius,  81. 
Apocalypse,  41  f, 
Apollinaris,  88. 
Apologists,  66  ff. 
Aristides,  Apology,  71. 
Aristo  of  Pella,  55. 
Arius,  119  ff. 

Aries,  Synod  of,  117,  122. 
Athanasius,  120  ff. 
Augustus,  religious  policy  of,  7. 
Avircius  Marcellus,  epitaph,  95. 

Bar-Cochba,  revolt  of,  49  f. 
Bardesanes,  58. 
Barnabas,  18,  24. 
Basilides,  58,  61. 

Caecilian  of  Carthage,  116. 
Csesarea,  S.  Paul  at,  21. 
138 


Callistus,    bishop    of  Rome,  '91, 

97-98. 
Caracalla,  109. 
Catacombs,  38,  43. 
Celsus,  attack  on  Christianity,  68- 

69. 
Charismata,  29  f, 
Clemens,   Titus   Flavius,    consul, 

42-43- 
Clement  of  Alexandria,  102-103. 
Clement  of  Rome,  42,  93. 
Clementine  Literature,  53,  54. 
Commodus,  91. 
Community  of  goods,  32. 
Confession,  34. 
Constantine,  114  ff.,  121. 
Constantius,  113  f. 
Cornelius,  bishop  of  Rome,  98. 
Councils,  origin  of,  121,  122. 
Creeds,  origin  of,  123. 
Cyprian  of  Carthage,  99  ff.,  in. 

Decius,     persecution     of,     no, 

III. 
Diatessaron  of  Tatian,  75. 
Didache,  28  f. 
Diocletian,   113 ;    persecution  of, 

"3-IT5. 
Dionysius  of  Alexandria,  in. 
Dionysius  of  Corinth,  93,  94. 


INDEX 


139 


Domitian,  40  f. 
Domitilla,  Flavia,  43. 
Donatism,  116. 

Easter,  131  f.  ;  Paschal  contro- 
versy, 83,  96. 

Ebionism,  51-54. 

Edict  of  Milan,  116. 

Elvira,  Synod  of,  122. 

Ephesus,  20. 

Epiphany,  133. 

Essenes,  12. 

Eucharist,  28,  129. 

Eusebius  of  Caesarea,  107,  120, 
123. 

Eusebius  of  Nicomedia,  120,  123. 

Fabian,   bishop   of   Rome,    98, 

no. 
Fast-days,  65,  130. 
Firmilian  of  Coesarea,  100. 
Friday,  observance  of,  130. 

Galatia,  19. 
Galatians,  Epistle  to,  25. 
Galerius,  114,  115. 
Gallienus,  113. 

Gallus,  persecution  of,  in,  112. 
Glabrio,  Acilius,  43. 
Gnosticism,  57  ff. 
Gospels,  31. 

Hadrian,    policy   of,    79,    80  ; 

founds  Aelia  Capitohna,  49. 
Hegesippus,  55.  95. 
Herakleon  the  Gnostic,  58. 
Hermas,  Shepherd  of,  94. 
Herod  the  Great,  10. 
Hippolytus,  97,  98 ;   canons    of, 

129. 


Ignatius  of  Antioch,  44,  45. 
Irenaeus,  58,  61,  62,  96. 

James,  S.  ,  46-47. 

Jerusalem,  Church  of,  47-48,  50 

51. 
Judaism,  8  ff. 

Judaising  Christianity,  26,  51. 
Justin,    life    and    works,    71-74 ; 

martyrdom,  87. 

Lapsed  Christians,  in. 
Lent,  origin  of,  132. 
Lord's  Day,  127  ff. 
Lugdunum    (Lyon),    martyrs  of, 
88  ff. 

Maccabees,  10. 
Marcion,  56-57. 
Marcus  Aurelius,  85-87. 
Martyrs,  commemoration  of,  132. 
Maximinus  Daza,  114-115. 
Maximinus  the  Thracian,  109. 
Melito  of  Sardis,  67,  74,  88. 
Menander,  58. 
Minucius  Felix,  Octavius  of,  76- 

78. 
Minucius  Fundanus,  Rescript  to, 

80-81. 
Mithraism,  6,  109,  121. 
Monarchianism,  119. 
Montanism,  63  ff. 
Mysteries,  Greek,  4. 

Nazarenes,  or  orthodox  Jewish 

Christians,  54. 
Neo-Caesarea,  Synod  of,  122. 
Nero,  persecution  of,  38  ff. 
Nicaea,  Council  of,  122  ft". 
Novatian,  98-99,  in. 


140 


CHURCH    HISTORY   TO   A.D.    325 


Onias,  Temple  of,  12. 
Origan,  103-107. 

Pamphilus,  library  of,  106. 

Papias,  31. 

Paschal  controversy,  83,  96,  131. 

Paul,  S.,  18-27. 

Paul  of  Samosata,  119. 

Pella,  48. 

Peter,  S. ,  death  of,  39. 

Philo  of  Alexandria,  13. 

Pliny,  correspondence  with  Tra- 
jan, 45-46. 

Polycarp  of  Smyrna,  82  ;  journey 
to  Rome,  83,  96 ;  martyrdom, 

83-85. 
Polycrates  of  Ephesus,  97. 
Pomponia  Graecina,  37. 
Pothinus,  89. 

Prophecy,  29  ;  Montanist,  63. 
Ptolemasus  the  Gnostic,  58 . 

QuADRATUS,  70. 
Quarto-deciman  controversy,  130. 

Re-baptism,  controversy  on,  loof. 
Romans,  Epistle  to,  25-26. 
Rome,  Church  of,  37,  92  ff. 

Sabbath  and  Sunday,  128. 
Sabellius,  119. 


Samaria,  17. 
Saturninus,  58. 
Scillium,  martyrs  of,  91. 
Septimius  Severus,  persecution  of, 

108-109. 
Simon  Magus,  54,  57. 
Stephanus,  bishop  of  Rome,  99- 

lOI. 

Stephen,  S.,  16. 

Stoics,  5. 

Sunday,  127  ff. 

Symeon,  martyrdom  of,  48. 

Tatian,  75. 

Telesphorus,  bishop  of  Rome,  80. 

Tertullian,  64. 

Traditores,  116. 

Trajan,  44-46. 

Valentinus,  58,  61. 
Valerian,  persecution  of,  112. 
Vespasian,  40. 

Victor,  bishop  of  Rome,  96-97. 
Vienna,  martyrs  of,  88-90. 

Worship,  Christian,  27  fF. 

Xystus,  bishop  of  Rome,  112. 

Zephyrinus,    bishop   of  Rome, 
97. 


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